Ca' Foscari Free Tours

Ca' Foscari's land entrance is on the Calle Foscari, a few streets east of Campo Santa Margherita in Dorsoduro.

The palazzo's façade on the landward side is from the Renaissance--unlike the Grand Canal side of the building and the original courtyard wall  (left), which are from the Venetian Gothic period.

Across the Rio di Ca' Foscari is Venice's fire department. Through a grilled gate in the palace couryard, you can see fireboats moored in vaulted slips.

The Ca' Foscari tour includes a visit to the courtyard of Ca' Giustinian, the Venetian Gothic-style palazzo next door, which is used by the university for administrative functions and special exhibits.

Note the staircase in the photo above: In earlier times, all Venetian palaces had outside staircases.

The well in the courtyard of Ca' Giustinian isn't really a well--it's the top of a huge cistern beneath the courtyard's bricks.

Until modern utilities came to Venice, palazzi and public squares around the city had cisterns where rainwater was filtered and stored. Rainwater entered the cisterns through small drainage holes (second photo).

The exterior staircase behind the cistern dates back to the 15th Century. It was restored in the early 20th Century.

An inscription on a column pays tribute to Helen D'Abernon, a British expat who, while renting an apartment in Ca' Giustinian, raised funds to restore the historic staircase.

 Her contribution might have been lost to history if it hadn't been for a university professor's smoking habit (shown in a photo dramatization above). Your Ca' Foscari tour guide will be happy to tell the story.

After you've toured the courtyard, you'll go inside Ca' Foscari and head for the water entrance, which is off limits to ordinary visitors but is included in the guided tour.

From the water gate of Ca' Foscari, a wooden walkway leads to Ca' Giustinian next door. This is where the university rector and distinguished guests arrive for special university events.

As you stand at the palazzo's water entrance, you'll have one of the best canal views in Venice.

Ca' Foscari is located at a bend in the Grand Canal, and the panoramic view extends from Rialto to Accademia. (Thanks to its superb location, Ca' Foscari is equipped with a floating stage each year for the Regata Storica, a rowing competition that dates back to the 13th Century.)

Back inside Ca' Foscari, you'll be taken upstairs to several important rooms in the palace, where you can see a restored ceiling, a floor that was uncovered during the 2004-2006 restoration, and a small auditorium--the Aula Magna Mario Baratto (second photo)--from the Carlo Scarpa restoration of 1935.

During our tour, a conference was taking place in the auditorium. Nevertheless, we were able to view the room and its artworks through a glass wall, and we observed the Italian love affair with telefonini: In the middle of a lecture, well-dressed academics of both sexes kept wandering out of the Aula Magna Mario Baratto to take calls on their mobile phones.

This photo shows the Aula Magna Silvio Trentin (a.k.a. the university's Great Hall) in Ca' Dolfin.

About the author:

Durant Imboden has written about Venice, Italy since 1996. He covered Venice and European travel at About.com for 4-1/2 years before launching Europe for Visitors (including Venice for Visitors) with Cheryl Imboden in 2001.

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Photos 14 and 15 courtesy of Ca' Foscari University. Used by permission.

Photo 2: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.