A thousand years of a state that elected its head and did not trust him
The Republic that built the Doge's Palace
The palace only makes sense once you know what it was built to house: an elected head of state hedged about with restrictions, a committee system designed to prevent any one man accumulating power, and an empire run from a city on mud.
Book your Doge's Palace entry ↗What a doge was
The head of state of the Venetian Republic, elected for life by an elaborate multi-stage process of ballots and lotteries specifically designed to make bribery impractical. He was not a monarch, could not name a successor, and was surrounded by councils whose principal function was to ensure he did not become one. Some hundred and twenty doges held the office between the eighth century and 1797.
The restrictions
A doge could not open official correspondence except in the presence of his councillors, could not meet foreign ambassadors alone, could not leave Venice without permission, and could not conduct private business abroad. His family furnished his apartments at their own cost and had to clear out promptly after his death. After each doge died, a commission reviewed his conduct and could fine his estate.
The Great Council
The sovereign body, comprising all adult male patricians of qualifying families — at times over two thousand men. Its membership was closed in 1297 in the serrata, fixing the ruling class as a hereditary caste. The Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the palace was built to hold this assembly, which is why it is 53 metres long with no columns to obstruct the view.
The Council of Ten
Established in 1310 after a failed conspiracy, originally as a temporary security committee and then permanently. It handled state security, espionage and political crime, met in secret and acquired a fearsome European reputation. The lion's-mouth letterboxes for anonymous denunciations belong to this apparatus.
Marin Falier
Elected doge in 1354 at the age of about seventy-six, and within a year involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the constitution and rule as prince. It was betrayed, he was tried by the Council of Ten and beheaded in 1355 on the same staircase where doges were crowned. His portrait in the Great Council frieze was replaced by a painted black veil recording the reason. The Republic's instinct was not to forget but to record the erasure permanently.
The empire
At its height Venice controlled Dalmatia, the Ionian islands, Crete, Cyprus for a period, and a chain of ports and trading posts across the eastern Mediterranean, alongside a substantial mainland territory in northern Italy. Its wealth came from carrying goods between Asia and Europe, and its navy was built in the Arsenale, a state shipyard that at its peak could turn out a galley in a day.
Lepanto and after
The naval victory over the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto in 1571 is commemorated throughout the palace, and it was in truth the high-water mark. Venice lost Cyprus in the same war and Crete in 1669, and the opening of the Atlantic trade routes had already begun to shift European commerce away from the Mediterranean. The Republic's last two centuries were a long, dignified, decorative decline.
The end
In May 1797, faced with Napoleon's army, the Great Council voted itself out of existence — the last vote taken in the room you walk through. Ludovico Manin, the last doge, handed over his ducal cap with the remark that he would not be needing it again. A thousand-year republic ended by a show of hands in an afternoon.
What survived
The building, more or less intact, and a set of institutions that were studied closely by later republicans looking for models of how to distribute power. The palace is worth walking as a piece of political architecture and not only as an art gallery: nearly every room in it was shaped by the problem of stopping one man from taking control.