Ca' d'Oro

Ca’ d’Oro is a late-Gothic palace facing Venice’s Grand Canal and the home of the Giorgio Franchetti Gallery. Giorgio Franchetti bought and restored the building, donated it and his collection to the Italian state in 1916, and the gallery opened in 1927. The palace facade, courtyard mosaic and carved wellhead are important parts of its history, not merely a frame for paintings. The museum is closed to the public during restoration work that began before its full closure on 2 February 2026. Its historic collection is not currently an interior visit. The regional museum authority expects reopening in spring 2027, but that is a plan rather than a confirmed date.

The single work everything else is arranged around is Andrea Mantegna's Saint Sebastian, for which Franchetti had a marble chapel built so that the painting could stand alone inside an altar. On the first floor, the portego holds the Renaissance sculpture: Tullio Lombardo's Double Portrait, worked in the manner of antique funerary carving; the Bust of a Boy by Gian Cristoforo Romano from Franchetti's own collection; and a low relief lunette by Jacopo Sansovino, the Madonna del bacio. Among the bronzes are Andrea Riccio's reliefs, which came from the church of the Servi, and the Apollo by Pier Jacopo Bonaccolsi, known as l'Antico, from the Pasqualigo collection. The second-floor portego carries something no other Venetian museum has in this quantity: fragments of external wall paintings taken off sixteenth-century buildings, including the frescoes the young Titian painted in 1508 on the side facade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, brought here after they were detached in 1967. The same floor holds the Dutch and Flemish pictures that arrived in 1929 and the best of the Franchetti paintings - Titian's Venus at the Mirror, the Sleeping Venus by Paris Bordon, two views by Francesco Guardi, a small Crucifixion attributed to Jan van Eyck and Van Dyck's Portrait of Marcello Durazzo.

There is no current indoor visit to time: the gallery is closed. The 75-minute planning duration shown elsewhere on this page is an editorial estimate for a possible full gallery visit, not a published operator promise and not a booking slot today. The post-restoration route, number of open rooms and time needed have not been announced. If you are already passing through Cannaregio, viewing the outside is a separate choice without museum entry; its timing depends on your walk or water route. Wait for an operator reopening notice before allocating time to the Mantegna chapel, courtyard or collection rooms.

Do not schedule an interior visit while the gallery remains closed. Both the museum and the regional authority say it closed to the public on 2 February 2026 for the final phase of restoration and display changes. Spring 2027 is the anticipated reopening season, not a confirmed opening day or a promise that every room will reopen at once. The former weekly timetable and first-Sunday admission arrangements describe the period before closure and are not usable now. Check the operator’s current hours page before travelling, then confirm the rooms and route available when a reopening is actually announced.

The operator’s ticket page does not publish a current admission amount; it states that the museum is closed for restoration. There is no present ticketed interior visit to buy. Do not treat an old price, a former free-Sunday promotion or a third-party listing as the price for a future reopening. The gallery has not published the new admission terms or the scope of a future ticket. When access resumes, check the museum’s own ticket page for the price, booking method and included rooms before making a purchase or planning around a specific work of art.

The address is Cannaregio 3932, on the north-eastern bank of the Grand Canal. No car reaches it - no car reaches anywhere in Venice - so the question is only which boat or which walk. The vaporetto stop is Ca' d'Oro on ACTV line 1, and the entrance sits on the short calle that links the Strada Nuova to that stop: about one minute on foot. From Santa Lucia railway station the walk is roughly thirty minutes, following the Strada Nuova along the line of the Grand Canal towards Campo Santi Apostoli, and it is a pleasant way to arrive; alternatively take line 1 from the landing stage in front of the station. Drivers park at Piazzale Roma and pick up line 1 there, or at Tronchetto and take line 2 to Piazzale Roma or Ferrovia before changing to line 1. From Marco Polo airport, ACTV bus line 5 or the ATVO Air Terminal shuttle reach Piazzale Roma for line 1, or the Alilaguna orange line runs to Rialto, which leaves a ten-minute walk or one more stop on line 1. Timetables for the water and land lines are on the ACTV site.

The main planning risk is arriving for a museum that is not admitting visitors. Restoration covers the galleries, visitor route, climate and lighting systems, accessibility, safety, entrance and service spaces. Before the full closure, some rooms had already been shut; those limited pre-closure arrangements are not a current partial-opening offer. Do not rely on old advice about a deposit charge, step-free access or which paintings are on display after restoration. The operator has not published the final reopening route or visitor rules. Check those details directly when it announces a date, especially if access requirements affect your visit.

The museum’s Grand Canal facade remains the subject to consider from outside; the regional museum authority describes its Gothic tracery and the colored stonework that gave the palace its name. The courtyard mosaic, Mantegna chapel and canal-facing loggias are inside the closed museum and cannot be treated as available photo stops now. No public interior photography plan is possible until the gallery reopens. The operator has not published post-restoration camera or tripod rules, so do not carry older visitor advice forward as a current permission. Check the museum’s own guidance when interior access returns.