Discover Palazzo Grassi

A formal white palace on the Grand Canal at Campo San Samuele, classical where its neighbours are Gothic and Baroque — a flat academic façade of regular bays and pediments that looks almost northern European against the water. Inside, the eighteenth-century rooms have been stripped back to bare plaster and concrete for contemporary art, so the shell is historic and everything in it is not.

Palazzo Grassi is built in the Venetian Classical style, a more restrained, symmetrical departure from the Gothic and Baroque palaces that line most of the Grand Canal. Its facade, designed by Giorgio Massari, favors clean classical proportions over the elaborate window tracery of the city's older buildings.

Inside, the original 18th-century decoration survives around the main stairwell and ceilings, frescoed by Michelangelo Morlaiter, Francesco Zanchi, Giambattista Canal, and Christian Griepenkerl. Tadao Ando's 2006 renovation left this historic shell largely intact while rebuilding the interior around it, creating roughly 5,000 square meters of exhibition space across around 40 rooms.