Doge's Palace Italy

Legendary

Built in 1340, the palace remains one of the main landmarks of Venice.

Photo by michael clarke stuff

In 1756, a prisoner named Giacomo Casanova escaped from the cells inside this palace. He broke through the ceiling, climbed out onto the roof, and dropped back into the building.

Then he changed into ordinary clothes and walked straight out the front door. Nobody stopped him.

The palace was home to the Doge, the elected leader of the Republic of Venice. Unlike a king, the Doge didn't inherit the job. Venice chose its leader through a complicated voting system.

A palace stood on this spot as far back as the year 810. Fires destroyed it again and again over the centuries.

Work on the building you see today began around 1340. Builders kept adding to it for the next 150 years, and the result is one of the finest examples of Venetian Gothic architecture anywhere.

The palace did several jobs at once. It was the Doge's home, the seat of government, the courthouse, and the prison, all under one roof.

Two sets of cells sat inside the building itself. The ground-floor cells were called i Pozzi, meaning "the Wells," because they were damp and had no windows.

The cells under the roof were called i Piombi, meaning "the Leads," named for the lead sheets covering the roof above. In summer they turned into ovens.

Venice eventually built a bigger prison across the narrow canal. To move prisoners there safely, workers built a covered stone passage in the early 1600s.

That passage is the Bridge of Sighs. It's completely enclosed, with small windows blocked by stone bars, and it earned its name from the idea that prisoners sighed at their last view of the city through those windows.

Climb the Golden Staircase into the government halls, decorated with enormous paintings by Tintoretto and Veronese. Cross the Bridge of Sighs yourself and peer out through the stone bars. Then descend into the old cells and see how little space prisoners actually had.