For a thousand years the Doge's Palace was the beating heart of the Venetian Republic — part royal residence, part seat of government, part court of law. From these rooms, a merchant city without a king ran one of the great maritime empires of the medieval and Renaissance world. To walk it today is to walk the corridors of that power, beneath ceilings dripping with gold and canvases by the masters of the Venetian school.
The palace you see is a masterpiece of Venetian Gothic, its airy pink-and-white facade resting on a double tier of arches that seems impossibly light for the weight it carries. Its origins reach back to the 9th century; the wing facing the lagoon was rebuilt from 1340, the wing toward St Mark's Square from 1424, and the Renaissance courtyard between 1483 and 1565. Fires in 1574 and 1577 scorched the interiors, but careful restoration preserved the look that astonishes visitors still.
Inside, the route climbs the ceremonial Golden Staircase to the Doge's Apartments and the great institutional chambers, culminating in the vast Chamber of the Great Council. Here, behind the Doge's throne, hangs Tintoretto's Paradise — reckoned the largest canvas painting in the world, a swirling heaven of hundreds of figures. From the splendour of state, the path leads across the enclosed Bridge of Sighs to the New Prisons, where the view of the lagoon is the last a condemned prisoner was said to see.
Your ticket is the Venice Museum Pass — the most generous way into the city's civic museums. As well as the Doge's Palace it opens the Correr Museum, the National Archaeological Museum and the Marciana Library's monumental halls around St Mark's Square, plus Ca' Rezzonico, Ca' Pesaro, the Fortuny and Mocenigo palaces, Carlo Goldoni's house, the Natural History Museum, and the glass and lace museums on the islands of Murano and Burano — twelve museums in all. The pass is valid for six months, with one admission to each and no time slot to book, so you simply arrive during opening hours and explore Venice entirely at your own pace. The Doge's Palace is inscribed, with the rest of the city, on the UNESCO World Heritage List as 'Venice and its Lagoon'.