Palazzo Falier Historical Timeline

Origins

A palace stood on this site in a simpler form as early as the 11th century. It was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1105, and the building visible today still carries traces of that Byzantine-era reconstruction in its ground-floor arcade and window arrangement.

Turning points

The palace was altered repeatedly in the centuries that followed, most visibly in the 13th and 15th centuries, when carved stone reliefs and Gothic decorative shields were added to its facade -- additions that still sit somewhat awkwardly alongside the building's older Byzantine bones.

Influential people

Palazzo Falier is best known for its connection to Marin Falier, elected the 55th Doge of Venice in September 1354. Within months, Falier was implicated in a conspiracy to seize absolute power and executed for treason in April 1355 -- the only doge in Venice's history to meet that fate. His portrait in the Doge's Palace is replaced by a painted black veil, a permanent civic reminder of his betrayal.

Cultural evolution

In the centuries since, the palace passed out of any single family's exclusive use, like much of the surrounding Cannaregio district, and was adapted repeatedly to new purposes as Venice's economy and population shifted.

Present-day significance

Today the palace's ground floor houses a hotel, while the building itself remains a quiet, working reminder of one of the most dramatic episodes in Venetian political history, standing largely unnoticed along a side canal away from the crowds of the Grand Canal.