Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel – Venice, Italy

Palazzo van Axel

Palazzo van Axel is a unique Venetian residence that belonged to the van Axel family, still privately owned today. A magnificent Gothic building overlooking the most beautiful Church in Venice, the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli designed by Pietro Lombardo.

The building is characterized by two internal courtyards from which the famous staircases decorated with stone busts lead to the noble floors. Of value are the rare testimonies of external frescoes, the numerous sculptures, the system for collecting water as an instrument of home life of a rich Venetian fifteenth-century residence.

Palazzo van Axel

Sculptures

In the second half of the seventeenth century Sansovino counted Palazzo van Axel in his Venetia noble and singular city “among the most distinguished in Venice for its marbles”. Of particular interest are the famous fifteenth-century heads of the staircase, the numerous Byzantine pateras, the fascinating sarcophagus with the Venetian galley with the Latin inscription “navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse”.

Frescoes

The frescoes on the walls of the courtyard are a testimony to the decorative richness of the external plaster of the Venetian noble palaces of the fifteenth century, now rare in the city panorama.

the secret garden

Inside the walls of Palazzo van Axel are hidden the two famous courts that for their extraordinary beauty have been the set of several films including Romeo and Juliet, winner of the Golden Lion at the 17th Venice International Film Festival and the colossal Casanova with Heath Ledger, Sienna Miller and Jeremy Irons.