The Palazzo della Ca' d'Oro in Venice: Stone and Lace

The view from the Ca' d'Oro

The graceful tiaras that crown it

“There the famous Ca d'Oro, that palace of the Taglioni, which I have already named, is shown to our amazed gaze.

What a jewel! The 14th and 15th centuries have come together to create a unique masterpiece.

To make you understand its slender elegance, the admirable ogival windows, the fabulous Moresque windows, the charming door, and the graceful diadems that proudly crown it, I would have to send you a sketch of it.”
Driou Voyage Venise 1861

Ouvraged like a woman's lace

Guardi View of the breakwater - Ca' d'Oro

“For a long time our pleasure, before this masterpiece of Venetian Gothic, had the painful quality inspired by an imprudent beauty, if it opposes to the fevers only its graces.

What, we thought, with its lower gallery and its two superimposed loggias, with its columns and arches transparent to the sun that bathes them, and so delicately worked that the draught from the canal should be enough to tear it like a woman's lace, this house of Ariel has been alive since the fourteenth century?


The Ca' d'Oro Palace How can we fail to be moved by such valour?

May I not have the fortune to intervene in the destinies of this little palace!

I would like to help him.

Help has come.

The harmonious, ethereal dwelling no longer asks for our compassion, but claims our admiring homage.


The Ca' d'Oro Palace With pleasure I took it to her, but at once how luxurious it seemed to me and of too rich a taste.

I felt cold for an art that no mystery bathed any more.

Opposite this happy jewel admired by many boats, and on this sun-drenched Grand Canal, the image offered itself to me, with an irresistible grace, of the remote regions of Venice.”
Maurice Barrès - Amori et Dolori Sacrum - The Death of Venice 1916

Where the dancer Taglioni rests from her pirouettes

The Palace of the Ca' d'Oro “On the left, the Vendramin Callergi palace, belonging to the Duchess of Berry; then that of the Ca' d'Oro, where the dancer Taglioni rests from her pirouettes.”
Louise Colet - The Italy of Italians 1862

A house of gold, excavated, sculpted and embroidered

“A delightful dwelling, the Ça d'Oro for Casa d'Oro, Golden House, excavated, sculpted and embroidered by the 14th and 15th centuries, whose masterpieces blended with the modern elegances of the Orient, make it the most ravishing dwelling one could dream of.


Guardi, the Piazzetta - Ca' d'Oro The architectural heads are remarkable here as in almost all the monuments of Venice, where we see heads of giants, knights with helmets lowered or visors raised, heads of men and women with hair differently knotted.”
Noémie Dondel Du Faouëdic - Memories 1875

Théophile Gautier and the Ca' d'Oro: “Fait exprès pour le nid d'une sylphide

“To the right rises the Cà D'Oro palace, one of the most charming on the Grand Canal.


The Palazzo della Ca' d'Oro It belongs to Miss Taglioni, who had it restored with the most intelligent care.

It is all embroidered, all lacy, all cut to size, in a Greek, Gothic, barbaric taste, so whimsical, so light, so airy, that it looks like it was made on purpose for the nest of a sylph.

Mlle Taglioni takes pity on these poor abandoned palaces.

She has several in boarding school, which she maintains out of pure commiseration for their beauty; we have been told of three or four to whom she gives this charity of repairs.”
Théophile Gautier - Italia 1855