This is the part of Venice that hangs its art on the wall.
The Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Galleria di Palazzo Cini, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and Palazzo Grassi–Punta della Dogana are linked through the Dorsoduro Museum Mile, an itinerary launched in 2015 that spans eight centuries of art along a mile of Dorsoduro between the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal. Medieval and Renaissance Venetian painting at the Accademia at one end, the most recent contemporary work at the Punta della Dogana at the other. Two of the stops were private houses, lived in by the people who assembled the collections still held there.
This slice of Walk No. 12, the Salute Walk in Dorsoduro, runs straight through the middle of it: from Palazzo Cini at POI #4 to the land entrance of Ca’ Dario at POI #10.
Palazzo Cini and the Buzzi interiors
The calle turns to the right after Palazzo Contarini Polignac and brings you out on Calle Nova S. Agnese. Turn right and follow Piscina del Forner. It takes you to Palazzo Cini-Valmarana, POI #4.
The palazzo opened as an art gallery in 1984 and holds a significant part of the collection of the industrialist and philanthropist Vittorio Cini (1885–1977). There are two floors. The first recreates the character of the patron’s residence. The second is given over to exhibitions and cultural events.
The collection runs to thirteenth- to sixteenth-century Tuscan painting, sculpture and objects: enamelled copper, a group of Gothic ivories, and the Cozzi porcelain table service laid out in the neo-Rococo oval room. In 1989 a collection of Ferrarese Renaissance paintings was added on permanent loan from the heirs of Ylda Cini Guglielmi di Vulci.
The rooms themselves are part of the exhibit. Between 1956 and 1958 the architect Tomaso Buzzi – much in demand among aristocratic clients wanting their private houses brought up to date – was asked to design the interiors of the Cini residence. His two most significant contributions survive as the oval spiral stairway and the neo-Rococo oval dining room.
Leaving for the next leg, head over Ponte San Vio. While you are on it, look right and smile. The webcam sits on the American Dinesen Hotel, about thirty metres along on the other side of Rio San Vio. It is the one thing on this walk that looks back at you.
Saint George’s, the English church
On the other side of the bridge the points of interest arrive in a cluster. The first is Saint George’s, POI #5, one of the few non-Catholic churches in the city.
The building began as a warehouse of the Venezia-Murano Mosaic and Glass Company. Sir Henry Layard donated it for use as a permanent English church, which was dedicated in 1892. Inside is the tombstone of Consul Joseph Smith, relocated from the Lido. Smith was an important patron of the arts in the city and acted for several years as Antonio Canaletto’s agent. There is also a stained-glass window commemorating Robert Browning, who spent the summers of 1887 and 1888 at Ca’ Rezzonico and died there in 1889.
A converted glassworks warehouse, an English benefactor, a consul’s tombstone carried in from the Lido. Venice absorbs these things without comment.
Palazzo Barbarigo and the Grand Canal
Palazzo Barbarigo, POI #6, stands on the right as you move towards the Grand Canal.
Keep going to the water. POI #7 is the reason this campo is on the route: an excellent place to stand and look across at a row of stunning palazzi on the far bank.
It is worth a full stop rather than a glance. Campo San Vio is one of the few places along this bank where the city opens directly onto the Grand Canal and simply lets you look.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Leave Campo San Vio on its southeastern edge and continue down Calle della Chiesa for 45 metres, at which point it becomes Fondamenta Venier dai Leoni. In another 70 metres you are at the entrance to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, POI #9.
The building has a history of its own. Palazzo Venier dei Leoni was commissioned by the Venier family in 1749 from the architect Lorenzo Boschetti, whose only other known building in Venice is the church of San Barnaba. Events overtook both the family and the city, and the palazzo was never finished. Only the first of its five planned storeys was built.
One storey out of five. The house has spent most of its life as a beginning.
In July 1949 Peggy Guggenheim bought the palazzo and the garden behind it, and it was her home for the next thirty years. That same year she staged an exhibition of contemporary sculpture in the garden. After some remodelling, and with the collection installed, she began in 1951 to open her house to the public free of charge, three afternoons a week from Easter to November. She continued to do so until her death in 1979.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection opened in 1980, managed by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, to which she had given the palazzo and the collection during her lifetime.
What is held here is one of the best collections of post-1910 modern art in Europe. It takes in early Cubist work by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, sculpture by Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti and Marino Marini, post-war American and European painting by Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko, and a substantial body of Surrealist work by Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico and others. Where any of it hangs on the day you visit is the museum’s business rather than the guidebook’s.
From the Guggenheim entrance, follow the path to the left. It becomes Calle San Cristoforo, turns right, and crosses a bridge of the same name. On the other side you are in Campiello Barbaro.
In 1907 Hugh Douglas called it a picturesque spot, much frequented by artists. Well over a century later the description still does its work. It is a small urban space tucked in behind Ca’ Dario, which fronts the Grand Canal on the far side.
Continue along Calle Barbaro and turn right. You pass the land entrance to Ca’ Dario, POI #10.
This is the back of one of the most photographed façades on the Grand Canal. Most visitors meet Ca’ Dario from the water, framed and at a distance. Here you meet it from behind, on foot, through a door.
Walking context
This article covers the middle section of Walk No. 12, the Salute Walk in Dorsoduro.
The walk starts and finishes in the same place, at the foot of the Accademia Bridge on the Dorsoduro side, which puts the Gallerie dell’Accademia at the door before you begin. From there the route runs east along Rio Terà Foscarini and turns into Callesella Rota for Palazzo Contarini Polignac, POI #2, before reaching Palazzo Cini and the stretch covered here.
Beyond Ca’ Dario the route crosses a bridge into Calle Bastion and continues 60 metres to the church of San Gregorio, POI #11, and its campo, where there is a fine vera da pozzo. From there it is a short walk under a sotoportego and over Ponte de l’Abazia into Campo della Salute and the Church of Santa Maria della Salute, POI #13. The walk then crosses Dorsoduro to the Giudecca Canal side and returns west along the Zattere before turning north for the Accademia again.
Dorsoduro has three walks and they interlock. The Barnabotti Walk finishes near where the Salute Walk begins, and the start point of the Veronese Walk, Walk No. 14, is just around the corner from where the Salute Walk ends. Walked together, the three total 5.5 km.
The full route can be followed on the Dorsoduro walking map.
Practical visitor notes
Two ticketed galleries sit within a few hundred metres of each other on this slice, and either could absorb a morning. The source does not give current opening times or admission prices for the Galleria di Palazzo Cini or the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, so check both before you set out and decide in advance which one you are giving your time to.
Saint George’s is a church rather than a museum, and the source gives no opening hours for it either. Treat access as a courtesy.
Campo San Vio and Campiello Barbaro are small, residential and quiet. The campiello in particular is a pocket of ordinary Venice sitting immediately behind one of the Grand Canal’s better-known façades. Walk it at walking pace.
If you are short of time, POI #7 costs nothing and takes five minutes. It is the best free thing on this section.
Continue exploring
This slice is one part of the wider Salute Walk. The full route, from the Accademia around to the Salute, the Zattere and back, is set out in 17 Walks in Venice, along with the two neighbouring Dorsoduro walks – Barnabotti, which ends near where this one starts, and Veronese, which begins near where it finishes.
For more on the campi and campielli that hold this part of the city together, including Campiello Barbaro and Campo Sant’Agnese further south, see The Fabric of Venice.