Collezione Peggy Guggenheim, Venice

The Collezione Peggy Guggenheim is an art museum inside Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an unfinished palace on Venice’s Grand Canal. Its architect was Lorenzo Boschetti, and the building served as Peggy Guggenheim’s home for decades. She opened her personal collection to visitors seasonally, turning domestic rooms into a setting for modern art.

After her death, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation took responsibility for the palace and collection and made them accessible throughout the year. The collection brings together Italian Futurism and American modernism, with works connected to Cubism, Surrealism, and abstract expressionism.

You can encounter artists including Picasso, Dalí, Magritte, Brâncuși, Kandinsky, and Jackson Pollock, alongside sculpture. One especially distinctive work associated with the museum is Marino Marini’s sculpture Angel of the City, placed outside the palace. Peggy’s relationship with this place was lasting: for decades, it was both her home and the public setting for the art she gathered in Europe and America. Today, the palace, garden, and collection preserve that unusual combination of private life and public museum.