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Save Venice is proud to announce a new conservation campaign for the Room of the Four Doors (Sala delle Quattro Porte) in Palazzo Ducale in Venice. The Gritti Palace, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Venice, will provide lead corporate support for the campaign, financing the conservation of the Door to the Senate, and contributing towards the conservation of the ceiling.

Save Venice Chairman, Frederick Ilchman said, “Venice’s Palazzo Ducale was for centuries the headquarters of a famously stable system of government. Today it remains one of the grandest buildings from medieval Europe, a masterpiece of architecture, painting, and sculpture. Save Venice is grateful that The Gritti Palace will serve as the lead corporate sponsor to restore one of the most magnificent spaces within the Palazzo Ducale: the Room of the Four Doors.”

Paolo Lorenzoni, General Manager of The Gritti Palace, a Luxury Collection, Venice, said, “Throughout its centuries-old heritage, The Gritti Palace has enjoyed a strong affinity with the art world, both as a place in Venice where artists and the cultural élite would gather, but also for its patronage of Venetian culture and the city’s artistic patrimony.  Through our collaboration with Save Venice, The Gritti Palace is proud to be able to renew its role as a Patron of Venice by contributing to the conservation of the extraordinary Room of the Four Doors in the Palazzo Ducale, and by bringing the attention of our hotel guests to the exceptional restoration projects led by Save Venice to preserve our unique city for future generations.”

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Save Venice has committed to fund the conservation of one of the most impressive reception halls in the Venetian Republic’s seat of the government. Treatment is slated to begin in Spring 2023, in collaboration with the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, and will focus on the room’s elaborate decorative ceiling complete with frescoes by Jacopo Tintoretto and the monumental four doors from which the room takes its name.

The Sala delle Quattro Porte is one of the most remarkable public spaces of the Palazzo Ducale, in fact one whose design and decoration involved some of the major artists in Venice, including Palladio, Tintoretto, Titian, Tiepolo, and Vittoria. A large rectangular hall, it stands as a passageway into the four rooms where Venice’s most powerful political bodies used to meet: the halls of the Senate, Collegio, Council of Ten, and Cancelleria.

In the time of the Serenissima, influential patricians, foreign diplomats, and royal visitors walked through the Sala delle Quattro Porte to access their offices and meet with government officials. Today over a million people pass through these halls each year.

The four monumental doors from which this room takes its name were created by some of the best sculptors of late 16th and early 17th-century Venice–Alessandro Vittoria, Giulio del Moro, Francesco Castelli, and Girolamo Campagna.

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