Ca' Dario — Venice's 'cursed palace'

OVERVIEW

Palazzo Dario, known as Ca' Dario, stands between the Palazzo Barbaro Wolkoff and the Rio delle Torreselle on the Grand Canal in Dorsoduro. It was remodelled after 1486, by a follower of Pietro Lombardo, for Giovanni Dario (1414–1494), secretary to the Venetian Senate, diplomat and merchant. John Ruskin admired its marble-encrusted oculi, and Monet painted it in 1908.

HISTORY

Dario died at eighty in 1494; the palace passed to his daughter Marietta and her husband Vincenzo Barbaro, and the Barbaro held it uneventfully into the 19th century. Later owners included the Armenian gem merchant Arbit Abdoll, the English historian Rawdon Brown (bought 1837), an Irishman named Marshall, and from 1896 the Countess de La Baume-Pluvinel, who hosted Henri de Régnier there (1899–1901). The American Charles Briggs was declared an 'unwelcome' guest by the Italian police in 1962 after four days there; Count Filippo Giordano delle Lanze, who bought it in 1968, was killed inside on 19 July 1970 by Raoul Blasich, who was sentenced to eighteen years. Kit Lambert, manager of The Who, owned it in the 1970s, then Fabrizio Ferrari (1978) and Raul Gardini (1985–1993).

REPORTED ACTIVITY

From the later 20th century it became known as the 'cursed palace' whose owners are doomed to ruin or violent death. The Italian article calls this a rumour without documentary support, built by the press: the list of misfortunes was first assembled in July 1993 by Mario Lollo in Il Gazzettino, after Gardini's suicide. The legend reads the facade inscription VRBIS GENIO IOANNES DARIVS as an anagram, SVB RVINA INSIDIOSA GENERO ('I bring forth under treacherous ruin'). Archive and court research refutes it: Marietta died of natural causes and not in poverty; Abdoll did not die ruined or in the palace; Brown sold at a profit and died naturally elsewhere in 1883; the Countess died naturally in 1911; Lambert died in England after a fall at his grandmother's house; Ferrari's company grew in value; Gardini died in Milan, in the Mani pulite scandal. The 2025 book Storia di Venezia attraverso le sue fake news counts the curse among Venice's great hoaxes. Filed UNVETTED.

VISITING

A private palace; the facade is seen from the Grand Canal and the land side from the Campiello Barbaro.