Description of the attraction
Fondaco dei Turchi is a Venetian-Byzantine palace on the banks of the Grand Canal in Venice. It was built in the first half of the 13th century by Giacomo Palmier, an exile from Pesaro. In 1381, the Venetian Republic bought the Palazzo and handed it over to the Marquis of Ferrara Niccolò II d'Este. Even then, the palace was sometimes used as a temporary residence of numerous distinguished guests of the Republic.
From the beginning of the 17th century until 1838, Fondaco dei Turchi served as a kind of ghetto, consisting of a single building, for the subjects of the Ottoman Empire - the Turks, from which it got its name. Later it housed a warehouse and a market for Turkish merchants. In the same years, there was also Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice - closed residential quarters for the Germans.
The inhabitants of Fondaco dei Turchi were subject to strict restrictions - for example, the time of leaving the ghetto and the time of return were strictly regulated. The Turkish trade was also controlled, and in those years they imported wax, crude oil and wool to Venice. After the Venetian Republic ceased to exist in 1797 by the decree of Napoleon, the Turks continued to live in the Palazzo.
By the middle of the 19th century, the building was in dire condition, and restoration work was carried out from 1860 to 1880. Some new elements were added to the original Veneto-Byzantine style, such as towers on both sides, which were not originally present.
From 1890 to 1923, the Correr Museum was located in Fondaco dei Turchi, which then moved to the Procuratie Nuove building in Piazza San Marco. Today the Palazzo is occupied by the Natural History Museum of Venice with a collection of flora and fauna, as well as fossils and an aquarium. In total, it exhibits over 2 million exhibits, divided into botanical, entomological, ethnographic and zoological collections.
