Museo di Palazzo Grimani

Once home to the Doge Antonio Grimani and the Patriarch Giovanni Grimani, this palace was enlarged in the 16th century, reputedly by Michele Sanmichele, to house the Patriarch's celebrated collection of classical antiquities and art (now housed in the Museo Correr), the Museo Archeologico and the Biblioteca Marciana.

Unlike most palazzi in Venice, this one has an inner courtyard, but what makes it worth a visit (even if there isn't a special exhibition) is the lavish mythological frescoes and stuccoes and marbles that Grimani commissioned to set off his antiques, bringing in painters from Rome to paint in the 'antique style' fashionable after the discovery of Pompeii and the grotesques in Nero's Golden House in Rome: Francesco Salviati, Giovanni da Udine (Raphael's pupil) and Federico Zuccari.