What to see in Venice

As well as being the residency of the Venetian Doge, the Doge´s Palace became the headquarters of the jurisdictional and political officials in the city. This represented a busier activity and its spaces had to be adapted to hold all of these services which were of high importance for the optimal functioning of Venice.

The living chambers of the Doge can be visited, since they´re in the traditional route of the Palazzo. Anyone can access the ticket offices and buy one to see how the noblemen lived here and be a witness of their day-to-day activities and where they spent their days.

However, there´s a special route that you can only access via previous booking and that will take you to a very different itinerary than the normal one. It´s the secret itinerary of the Doge´s Palace. The chambers hidden from the traditional route will reveal its secrets to the visitors since most of them were very important to the internal life of the city.

You can access, for example, the office of the Palace´s chief, where the decisions that affected the political and social life of Venice were taken. Another of those chambers held the meetings that determined the historical path that the city was going to take and that gave Venice the importance that it had during its golden age.

The guides tell the groups the intricacies of the functioning of the administrative and judicial tasks of Venice in those times, and allow the visitors to get an approximated idea of how the different orders that came from the Venetian Republic government were prepared.

Another of the areas that can be visited on this itinerary around the Doge´s Palace are the ones that were used as a prison and interrogation rooms. In the latter, people used to get tortured, who ended up confessing their crimes, whether they´d done it or not, to the judges.

In the cell area you can visit the place where the famous prisoner Giacomo Casanova was, and from where he escaped, if we believe his fabled memoirs, a literary detail amongst all the history that this venerable building holds.

Groups have to be of a maximum of 25 people and it costs 20 euros per person to enter, although there´s a special reduced price of 14 euros for certain groups. For example, for children from 6 to 14 years age, students from 15 to 25 years old, those who accompany groups of children or students (a maximum of two), over 65s, Venice tourist card users or holders of a ticket in combination with other museums as well as those who work for the Ministry of Culture. Families made up of two adults and at least one child between the ages of 6 and 18 pay full price and the rest, a reduced one.

The guide´s timetables depends on the chosen language. The itinerary in Italian begins at 9.30am and at 11.10am; the one in English at 9.55am, 10.45am and 11.45am and lastly, the French one at 10.20am and 12pm. All visits last approximately 1h 15.

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This is the moment to learn about the secret itineraries in the Doge´s Palace in Venice, where the future of the city and the republic was decided. Discover apartments in Venice to immerse yourself in the history of a city that guards many secrets yet to discover.

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