This route provides an opportunity to get acquainted with the most famous monuments of Venetian architecture of the XV century. “To turn something useful, necessary, functional into beautiful – that is the task of architecture,” stated Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The Doge’s Palace in Venice is a prime example of that city’s great Gothic architecture, a kind of Bach’s fugue in stone that makes you freeze and contemplate. It is by talking about its structural system, its purpose, its decoration, that we begin the story.
Visiting masters from Lombardy and Tuscany gained fame as skillful architects, fulfilling orders for the construction of Venetian palazzos (palaces), intricately combining Northern European and Eastern (Arabic) elements of architectural styles. The fashion for the East in Venice was organic, natural. Therefore, the architectural style of Venice, with its airy arcades and lancet arches, close in style to the Arab-Muslim architecture, and received a new definition – “Venetian Gothic”.
You will be offered to visit and see the monastery churches of the XV century: St. John and St. Paul, the Cathedral of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, the Church of Madonna dell’Orto, the Church of Santo Stefano.
Winding through the narrow Venetian calle (streets), you will note for sure how much this peculiar Gothic style has become an emblem of Venice. Palazzo Mastelli on the Misericordia, Ca’ d’Oro on the Grand Canal, Ca’ Foscari, Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, and more. After the guide’s explanations will come alive in your eyes, reveal to you their history, reveal their secrets.
The local Venetian Gothic style has found its vivid expression in both sculpture and painting. It will certainly be interesting and informative, even at the level of a curious observer, to get to know the works of the workshop of Vivarini, Giovanni d’Alemagna and others.
