The story of this place
For over five centuries the Doge's Palace was the nerve centre of the Venetian Republic—residence of the elected doge, seat of the councils that governed a maritime empire, and home to its law courts and dungeons. Its pink-and-white Gothic facade floats above an arcade, while inside the vast Chamber of the Great Council holds Tintoretto's 'Paradise,' among the largest oil paintings in the world. Anonymous denunciations were dropped into the stone 'lions' mouths' letterboxes. The enclosed Bridge of Sighs, built around 1600, carried condemned prisoners from the interrogation rooms to the New Prison; legend says they sighed at their last glimpse of Venice through its windows. The adventurer Casanova famously escaped from the palace's lead-roofed cells in 1756.