The Palazzo de la Ca' d'Oro in Venice, the Palification

The Palace of the Ca' d'Oro

The Ca' d'Oro is built on an old palace of the Zen family

The Palazzo de la Ca' d'Oro is built on the site of an old palace that belonged to the Zen noble family of Venice.

The former Zen palace was given to the Contarini family as a dowry, and Marino Contarini became its owner.

While Marino Contarini's intention was to build a luxurious palace that could rival the other palaces on the Grand Canal in terms of beauty and luxury, the cost of such a palace had as much to do with the visible part “as with the lower part, i.e. the foundations, which, as we have just seen, were far from simple to build.

Vittore Carpaccio, Annunciation at the Franchetti Ca' d'Oro Gallery in Venice, Italy

Carpaccio «Annunciation» at the Ca' d'Oro The piling, the driving of hundreds of stakes into the lagoon, was therefore not only time-consuming but also weighed heavily on the final budget of a Venetian construction.

As a result, when building a new palace or church, builders systematically tried to “recover” the old stakes that were already there.

Of course, salvaging did not in any way mean extracting the existing stakes and driving them in again, which would have wiped out the hoped-for savings, but simply rebuilding exactly where they were already positioned.

This was the choice made by Marin Contarini when he built his palace at Ca d'Oro.

Bartolomeon Bon, Well in the courtyard of the Ca' d'Oro in Venice, Italy, Allegory of Strength, Justice and Charity with the arms of the Contarini family

Wells in the courtyard of the Ca' d'Oro The recovery of the pilings from the Zen family's former palazzo therefore had a fairly significant impact on the current appearance of the Ca' d'Oro and in particular on its asymmetrical configuration, since the load-bearing walls of the new palace partly reproduced the ground plan of the former Zen palace.

You should also be aware that this golden house has unfortunately sunk by almost 70 centimetres since it was built, its foundations having clearly not been sufficient to support its weight.

It's a great pity, because you'd think that this facade, which was already so "airy", must have looked even lighter when the Ca' d'Oro rose higher above the water.

The Ca' d'Oro: A building... upside down!