In a city of such singular beauty as Venice, it’s hard to know which way to turn. From the Grand Canal lined with majestic palazzi to the labyrinth of more discreet waterways that suddenly open up to reveal a scene-stealing cathedral or piazza, it’s an assault on the senses of the most bewitching kind.
But we all love to measure, rank and compare. And the Dorsoduro district is considered by many to be the best place to live in Venice. Where a hive of independent, age-old local institutions like Antica Locanda Montin (whose vine-shaded garden has welcomed diners from Modigliani and President Jimmy Carter to Robert de Niro and David Bowie) meet cultural behemoths like the Gallerie dell’Accademia and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
The Dorsoduro rates highly for practicality too, with water bus stops, car garages, supermarkets and the bus and train station all within walking distance, points out life-long resident Michelangelo Ravagnan, founder of Ravagnan’s | Forbes Global Properties. Plus it’s all pleasingly separated by the Grand Canal from the tourist swarm around San Marco.
The apogee of Dorsoduro living, however, is to have a piece of a palazzo on the Fondamenta Zattere. Properties overlooking this long, wide waterfront promenade that fringes the Giudecca Canal are bathed in sunshine, this being the south side of Venice, and the very best command more than €100,000 (~$104,000) per square foot.
It’s possible to drill down further into the desirability stakes. You will of course want the piano nobile—the palace’s main floor, designed by noble residents to house the main bedrooms and vast reception rooms with high ceilings and huge windows to impress guests.
And in a city so densely built that even the most opulent palazzi are usually limited to views to the front and back, imagine owning a piano nobile apartment that proffers views to the front, back and sides. A rare find indeed.
Oh, one more thing. When your budget enables you to buy the best that Venice has to offer, you probably want history too. As colorful as possible.
Enter Palazzo Clary, built on the Zattere in 1570 by a noble family who resided there untroubled for 226 years. Until, that is, a young Napoleon Bonaparte took a shine to the city and commanded his troops to seize it. Cue the end of the Venetian Republic.
The palace fell into the hands of the Austrian state, and the Austrian emperor married off his daughter to Napoleon, which led to the birth of Napoleon II. But as Baby Napoleon’s dad had declared war against Austria, the Emperor wasn’t allowed to travel to Notre-Dame de Paris for his grandson’s baptism, so he sent Prince Clary of Czechoslovakia in his place. Clary agreed to become Napoleon Jnr’s godfather, and the Emperor gave him this palazzo as a token of his gratitude.
Whizz forward to the end of World War II, when the last of Clary royalty, stripped of all their possessions in Czechoslovakia by the Russians, left their Venetian home and sought sanctuary in the U.S. The palazzo assumed a new range of roles, including as the French consulate’s HQ, which housed the famous ‘red line’: the Cold War telephone hotline between Moscow and Washington, designed to deter accidental nuclear war.
No one knows, and loves, the twists and turns of this building’s history more than Dr Enrico Smeraldi, the eminent physician and professor, who owns the higher and far bigger of the palace’s two piano nobile (the other—for nothing about this palazzo is mundane—is owned and lived in by Pablo Picasso’s granddaughter, the art historian and jewelry entrepreneur Diana Widmaier Picasso).
The now (mainly) retired Dr Smeraldi—whose residence housed the critical telephonic piece of Cold War history—has decided, after 30 years of ownership, to put his home on the market. And so the opportunity exists for someone new to become part of the illustrious story of Palazzo Clary.
Michelangelo Ravagnan, for one, hopes that the buyer of this six-bedroom, 550-square-meter (~5,900 sq ft) residence, priced at €10 million (~$10.5 million), will want to leave it largely as it is, and will appreciate the history that lies in its very bones.
“I grew up—and still live—within meters of this palace and, as a child, I would sit in front of it and think that one day, if I win the lottery, I’ll buy the piano nobile,” he says. “This type of property only comes on the market every few decades—it’s the natural life cycle of such properties. Noble families often keep them for 100 years or more.”
As is traditional in such buildings, the ground floor of Palazzo Clary is used for storage (and to access the water gate in the back garden, so you can hop onto a water taxi when you head out for your evening Bellinis). Above, on a mezzanine floor and in the very top floors, are a few small one-bedroom apartments. In between are the two piano nobile residences, with Dr Smeraldi’s one of the biggest in the Dorsoduro district.
Externally, nothing has changed, nor can it—such is the time-warp appeal of Venice. Inside, too, little looks different to when generations of the Clary family ruled the roost. On ascending the apartment’s private ‘noble stairs’, you enter through double wooden doors into a huge reception room of around 120 square meters (~1,300 sq ft), with views over the canal at the back.
The rooms feature the original decorative beamed ceilings and mosaic-like terrazzo floors. In the dining room are painted leather wall hangings and an even older flooring technique than terrazzo: Pastellone, a durable and lightweight covering made from lime and ground terracotta. Prince Clary’s master bedroom remains largely unchanged too—and, because many of the apartment’s adornments such as paintings and mirrors are protected by the heritage authorities, will stay in place for future generations.
After a century or more of holding onto such properties, noble families, out of financial necessity, would often split their palazzi into apartments, selling them off piece by piece. It’s telling, though, that they usually kept one piece for themselves: the piano nobile.
Whoever next acquires this one at Palazzo Clary knows they have a piece of Venetian history that is as coveted as it is colorful.
Ravagnan’s is a member of Forbes Global Properties, an invitation-only network of top-tier brokerages worldwide and the exclusive real-estate partner of Forbes.
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