ting balcony--The carved capitals--A responsible
column--The _Porta della Carta_--The lions of Venice--The Giants'
Stairs--Antonio Rizzo--A closed arcade--Casanova--The bronze wells--A
wonderful courtyard--Anonymous accusations--A Venetian Valhalla.

"That house," said an American on a Lido steamboat, pointing to the
Doges' Palace, "is a wonder in its way."

Its way is unique. The soft gentle pink of its south and west facades
remains in the memory as long and as firmly as the kaleidoscopic hues of
S. Mark's. This pink is, I believe, the colour of Venice.

Whether or not the Doges' Palace as seen from S. Giorgio Maggiore, with
its seventeen massive arches below, its thirty-four slender arches
above, above them its row of quatrefoiled circles, and above them its
patterned pink wall with its little balcony and fine windows, the whole
surmounted by a gay fringe of dazzling white stone--whether or not this
is the most beautiful building in the world is a question for individual
decision; but it would, I think, puzzle anyone to name a more beautiful
one, or one half so charming. There is nothing within it so entrancing
as its exterior--always with the exception of Tintoretto's, "Bacchus and
Ariadne."

The Ducal Palace is Gothic made sprightly and sunny; Gothic without a
hint of solidity or gloom. So light and fresh is the effect, chiefly the
result of the double row of arches and especially of the upper row, but
not a little due to the zig-zagging of the brickwork and the vivid
cheerfulness of the coping fringe, that one has difficulty in believing
that the palace is of any age at all or that it will really be there
to-morrow. The other buildings in the neighbourhood--the Prison, the
Mint, the Library, the Campanile: these are rooted. But the Doges'
Palace might float away at any moment. Aladdin's lamp set it there:
another rub and why should it not vanish?

The palace as we see it now has been in existence from the middle of the
sixteenth century. Certain internal changes and rebuildings have
occurred, but its facades on the Piazzetta and lagoon, the Giants'
Stairs, the courtyard, were then as now. But before that time constant
structural modification was in progress. The original palace ran beside
the Rio del Palazzo from S. Mark's towers to the Ponte di Paglia, with a
wing along the lagoon. Its width was equal to that from the present Noah
or Vine Corner by the Ponte di Paglia to the fifth column from that
corner.