Venice landmark opens its doors after 500 years

Procuratie Vechhie is one of the most photographed buildings in the world, yet few have an inkling of what it is or what goes on inside.

St. Mark's Square in Venice. Picture: AFP.

Stretching the length of St Mark’s Square in Venice, it is one of the most photographed buildings in the world, yet few among the millions of tourists who stop for a snap have an inkling of what it is or what goes on inside.

That is all about to change after an army of builders descended on the partly abandoned Procuratie Vecchie for a refurbishment, squeezing in new staircases, installing exhibition spaces and restoring its Renaissance-era wooden beams and 200-year-old gilt ceilings.

The 150-yard-long building is being transformed by the British architect Sir David Chipperfield and will open its doors to the public in April for the first time in 500 years.

“This was a private world and it is a pleasure to turn it into a public place,” said Chipperfield, 68, who is known for rebuilding the Neues Museum in Berlin. Funded by the Italian insurance company Generali, the owner of the building, he is opening up spaces for start-ups run by refugees, exhibitions, workspaces for humanitarian charities, a cafe, artists’ studios and a 200-set auditorium.

Tourist crowds in St Mark's Square.

The plans for the building are a departure from the centuries when it was occupied by Venice’s procurators, a role that represented the wealth, privilege and power that made the maritime empire tick. The nine procurators who lived and worked in the building were drawn from the city’s richest families and cared for the famous basilica overlooking the square, as well as looking after the poor and managing the execution of wills written up by Venetians. Their office was second only to the doge, the leader of the republic, in terms of prestige.

“They were part of that rigid control over Venetians that made Venice so successful, and the fact they lived overlooking the most important square in the city symbolised that control,” Alberto Torsello, the site manager, said.

Completed in 1532 with 52 arches at ground level, where Venetians gathered, and more than 300 windows above, the Procuratie Vecchie was matched in the 16th century by a twin building facing it on the other side of the piazza, where the Caffe Florian later served coffee to Goethe, Casanova, Lord Byron, Proust and Dickens.

The shorter, west end of the square was closed in 1810 by a third building put up by Napoleon, who conquered Venice and brought the Venetian republic to an end after 1,100 years.

Two decades later the fledgling insurance company Generali moved into the Procuratie Vecchie and by the mid-19th century employed 1,000 staff there. In 1989 it moved to the mainland, leaving the building mostly empty. Now the firm is back and determined to give St Mark’s Square a new purpose. “We hope to bring the piazza back to life, that kind of life which does not simply revolve around tourism,” Philippe Donnet, the chief executive of Generali, said.

The buzz of activity is focused on the third-floor rooms, once used as attics by the procurators, where workers are restoring 16th-century beams and brickwork, bringing in big screens for exhibition spaces and putting the finishing touches to the 200-seat auditorium. A modern staircase accesses a new roof terrace offering views across Venice to the snow-capped Dolomites.

Its new role as a destination for charities and start-ups run by refugees would revive the procurators’ mission to assist the needy, Donnet said. He added: “We are bringing the Procuratie Vecchie back to having a social purpose.”

Chipperfield said that a key part of his restoration involved reopening old entrances and adding staircases that would help the public to access all the floors. “What we need to do is make sense of the original building, of what’s been done to it and what it could be,” he said. “I think we are finding coherence.”

The Times