The story
Ca' Rezzonico is a great Baroque palace on the Grand Canal, begun by Baldassare Longhena, the architect of Venice's domed Salute church, and finished nearly a century later by the Rezzonico family, who had bought their way into the nobility and wanted a house to prove it.
Today it is the Museum of 18th-Century Venice, and it does something unusual: it puts the art back in the rooms it was made for. Ceilings by Giambattista Tiepolo open overhead in bursts of light, the walls carry Pietro Longhi's small scenes of masked Venetian life and Canaletto's views, and the furniture and chandeliers are of the period, so the whole palace reads as one preserved interior.
The English poet Robert Browning rented rooms here and died in the palace in 1889. From the piano nobile the windows still look straight down onto the traffic of the Grand Canal, much as they did when the Rezzonico gave their famous parties.
