Venice, Part Three

The morning of my last full day in Venice brought me back to the Piazza San Marco. We took a tour of the Doge's Palace next to the basilica. 

The current palace was begun in 1340, although it's remarkable how there had been a Doge figure in Venice going all the way back to before 800 AD.

The main courtyard inside the palace, looking over at the basilica.

A "Mouth of Truth" set into the outer wall of the courtyard on the second story. People would slip pieces of paper anonymously accusing someone else of a crime into the mouth and the Doge and his councils would investigate.

These gold staircase ceilings are pretty awesome, but Venice (or Italy, for that matter) has nothing on the opulence of Versailles or the Louvre or some of the other French chateaus. But then again, this palace was built during the tail end of the Middle Ages, while the current decor and design of Versailles and the Louvre was done during the 16th-18th centuries, when Baroque and Rococo were the styles in vogue.

Unfortunately, like so many other places I found in both Venice and Rome, you're not allowed to take pictures inside the palace itself. But there are some incredible paintings by Titian and Tintoretto inside, especially in the room where the great councils met.

After we walked through the Doge's personal apartments and the governmental meeting spaces (convenient for the Doge to have his home, his church, and his workplace basically all in the same complex, no?), the tour of the palace takes you into the prison that was built into the side of the complex. I was getting a little claustrophobic walking down the hallways and looking into the cells, many of which were designed to hold multiple prisoners but weren't big enough to allow them to stand up al the way. Only one person ever successfully escaped: Casanova.

On the Bridge of Sighs.

After lunch we went to Correr Museum, which is housed in the buildings that surround the other three sides of St. Mark's Square and saw some pretty fabulous art, some dating all the way back to ancient Rome. Then we had some free time before meeting up to go on our obligatory gondola ride!

Me in our gondola!

The Rialto bridge at night.

What our gondolas looked like.

Wandering around doing some shopping later on, I walked by this Murano glass shop with these fabulous displays in their windows:

Each one of these figures is an inch to an inch and a half tall at the most!

And that was essentially the end of our adventure. We choose to go back to the restaurant we'd had dinner at the first night in Venice because we all loved it so much. (I'm also now convinced that I can never have gnocchi again after having it there; nothing will ever compare to that restaurant's fluffy marshmallow-like dumplings smothered in four-cheese sauce.) Then the next morning we got up early and took yet another water taxi back to the airport: