Doge's Palace

For centuries the Doge's Palace was the whole Venetian state in one building, the residence of the elected Doge, the council chambers, the law courts and the prisons, all wrapped in pink-and-white Gothic stonework on the lagoon's edge. Power and punishment sat a few rooms apart.

The great council hall, the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, carries on its end wall Tintoretto's Paradise, one of the largest oil paintings in the world, a swirling heaven of hundreds of figures made when the artist was in his seventies. Overhead, ceilings by Veronese and Tintoretto glorify Venice as a crowned goddess.

From the palace a covered stone bridge crosses a narrow canal to the newer prison, the Bridge of Sighs, named centuries later for the last view of Venice a condemned prisoner would catch through its stone lattice. The route through the palace still ends there, in the cells.