Book description
Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Venier family waned and the project was abandoned with only one storey complete. Empty, unfinished, and in a gradual state of decay, the building…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Unfinished Palazzo as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I love biographies of independent-thinking, intrepid, creative women, and this did not disappoint.
Featuring three 20th-century women, Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse, and Peggy Guggenheim, an Italian, a Brit, and an American, Mackrell documents the years each woman spent inhabiting the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal in Venice, imprinting it with her unique personal style.
Set in pre-and-post-WWII Venice, during bygone periods of high glamor, filled with a cast of colorful characters, The Unfinished Palazzo is both an account of these unconventional and fascinating women and the history of an 18th-century palace that today houses the Peggy Guggenheim…
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