Description of the attraction
Palazzo Labia is a baroque palace in Venice, built in the 17th and 18th centuries. This is one of the city's last grand palaces on the water - little known outside Italy, it is notable for its dance hall, painted with frescoes by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. In addition, Palazzo Labia is also distinguished by the fact that it has not only a facade facing the Grand Canal, but also a rear facade overlooking the Cannaregio Canal (the latter, by the way, is the main one). In Venice, this architecture is very rare.
The Labia family, which owned the Palazzo, came from Spain and only in 1646 bought themselves the title in Venice, which earned the local aristocrats the nickname "upstarts". They began construction of their palace at the very end of the 17th century, hiring two little-known architects for this - Tremignon and Cominelli. The location chosen was the confluence of the Grand Canal with the Cannaregio Canal in the San Jeremia area. Like many other palaces in Venice, Palazzo Labia has the shape of a rectangle built around a courtyard, while its facades are simple and even somewhat strict, unlike most classical buildings of that time. The façade overlooking Campo San Jeremia square is not inferior in its decoration to that overlooking the Cannaregio Canal. The third, facing the Grand Canal, is smaller. The palace itself has five floors. The first and second floors are very low and decorated with protruding stones. The next two floors have high segmented windows separated by pilasters and framed by balustraded balconies. The fifth floor is a low mezzanine under a hipped roof with small oval windows, separated from each other by the heraldic eagles of the Labia family. The façade overlooking Campo San Jeremia is in the Venetian Gothic style and contrasts significantly with the other two classic façades.
Inside, the main dance hall, the Salone delle Feste, is completely painted with frescoes depicting the romantic encounters of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. These frescoes are a joint creation of Tiepolo and Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna. It is believed that members of the Labia family served as models for the frescoes. The rest of the front rooms, of course, pale in comparison with the dance hall, but, nevertheless, they also deserve attention. For example, the Green Damascus Salon features an inlaid marble fireplace and huge frescoes by Pompeo Batoni.
