Ca' Dario

You are next to a traghetto, one of the gondolas that ferry passengers, standing up, from one bank of the Grand Canal to the other. Look across: that narrow marble palace, studded with roundels of porphyry and green stone, is Ca' Dario. Ca' is Venetian for "house", and it is how many palaces are named.

1A diplomat who did well

It was built around the 1480s for Giovanni Dario, a cittadino, meaning a Venetian who was not a nobleman. He served the Republic as a diplomat and in 1479 negotiated peace with Sultan Mehmed II. He wanted it on record, so he had this carved at water level: VRBIS GENIO IOANNES DARIVS, "Giovanni Dario, to the genius of the city". The house was the dowry of his daughter Marietta, who married a patrician, Vincenzo Barbaro, in 1493. Claude Monet painted it in 1908.

2The "curse"

Since the second half of the 20th century people have repeated that its owners are doomed to ruin or violent death. There are real events behind the story: in 1970 Count Filippo Giordano delle Lanze was murdered inside, and Raul Gardini, owner from 1985, took his own life in 1993. But research in the archives shows that the Barbaro family lived here for centuries without tragedy, and that many owners died of old age.

The curse is a press story stitched onto scattered events, not a documented reality.

The lagoon has another fashionable legend, the island of Poveglia. It is closed to the public and cannot be visited.

3What to look for

• The coloured discs on the facade, arranged like rosettes.
• The inscription at water level.
• The slight lean of the building, caused by settling foundations.