APPENDIX, 11 453

11. [p. 145] SITUATIONS OF BYZANTINE PALACES

(1.) THE TERRACED HOUSE¹

The most conspicuous pile in the midmost reach of the Grand Canal is the Casa Grimani, now the Post-Office.² Letting his boat lie by the steps of this great palace, the traveller will see, on the other side of the canal, a building with a small terrace in front of it, and a little court with a door to the water, beside the terrace. Half of the house is visibly modern, and there is a great seam, like the edge of a scar, between it and the ancient remnant, in which the circular bands of the Byzantine arches will be instantly recognised. This building not having, as far as I know, any name except that of its present proprietor, I shall in future distinguish it simply as the Terraced House.

(2.) CASA BUSINELLO

To the left of this edifice (looking from the Post-Office) there is a modern palace, on the other side of which the Byzantine mouldings appear again in the first and second stories of a house lately restored. It might be thought that the shafts and arches had been raised yesterday, the modern walls having been deftly adjusted to them, and all appearance of antiquity, together with the ornamentation and proportions of the fabric, having been entirely destroyed. I cannot, however, speak with unmixed sorrow of these changes since, without his being implicated in the shame of them, they fitted this palace to become the residence of the kindest friend I had in Venice.³ It is generally known as the Casa Businello.⁴

(3.) THE BRAIDED HOUSE

Leaving the steps of the Casa Grimani, and turning the gondola away from the Rialto, we will pass the Casa Businello, and the three houses which succeed it on the right. The fourth is another restored palace, white and conspicuous, but retaining of its ancient structure only the five windows in its second story, and an ornamental moulding above them, which appears to be ancient, though it is inaccessible without scaffolding, and I cannot therefore answer for it. But the five central windows are very valuable; and as their capitals differ from most that we find (except in St. Mark’s), in their plaited or braided border and basket-worked sides, I shall call this house, in future, the Braided House.*

* Casa Tiepolo (?) in Lazari’s Guide.⁵

¹ [For this house, see above, p. 151.]

² [The Post-Office is now removed to the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi; and the Casa Grimani is the Court of Appeal.]

³ [Rawdon Brown: see above, Introduction, p. xxvii.]

⁴ [Now the Casa Sabaite.]

⁵ [Afterwards known successively as the Casa Donŕ (see in the next volume, Venetian Index, s. “Donŕ”) and the Casa Sicher.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]