Ca' Dario, Venice

Ca' Dario is the marble-faced palace beside the Grand Canal, between Palazzo Barbaro Wolkoff and the narrow Rio delle Torreselle. Its design is attributed to Pietro Lombardo, and its Venetian Gothic fabric later received Renaissance alterations. Look at the façade's marble oculi and its deliberately uneven arrangement: the restricted plot produced an unusual composition divided into two sections.

Giovanni Dario commissioned the house after 1486. He was a Senate secretary, diplomat, and merchant, and the palace passed to his daughter Marietta after his death in 1494. Her marriage linked the family to the neighbouring Barbaro household; the Senate also used Ca' Dario at times to lodge Turkish diplomats.

The building's story becomes especially vivid in the modern period. Claude Monet painted it in 1908, creating Impressionist views now held in museums in Chicago and Wales. Its sinister reputation as Venice's cursed palace rests on a press-created rumour, contradicted by archival research; nevertheless, at least seven owners and guests are associated with violent or otherwise tragic deaths in the popular story.

Among its notable owners was Kit Lambert, manager of The Who. The palace remains memorable for the contrast between delicate marble ornament and its unsettling public legend.