A palace looking on the Grand Canal, independently from the flow of his single destiny, appears as a concentration of the city’s history; it can tell the city’s layers by simply being there. It is always a hint and a sign of visibility, of a hardly obtained belonging; it is a status symbol for who firmly tends to adfirm a “genos”, a power reached and conquered, in order to make show of it.

So, the marble density of one of the most recognizable symbols of Venice continues to be popular and sought-after in an alternation of events quickly following each other between transfers of title, gusts of unfavourable destiny, reverses and diverging goals, up to the present time. Palazzo Grassi hasn’t stopped prolonging from century to century its calling to container for ambitions that go beyond the local. This has made it an ante-litteram glocal space inside the maze-like Venetian texture. From the evergreen Giulio Lorenzetti we get a short display of his presence: “26) Powerful colossus of the immensely wealthy family Grassi of Bologna, inscribed in 1718 to the Venetian aristocracy; erected by the architect Giorgio Massari; it is the most notable example of civil architecture of the 18th century, of classical shape”(pag. 625 of “Venice and its delta”).

It is not easy to go after the transfers of title that marked the changing of ages. Since that ancestral moment, there have been a lot of restless adventures following each other: with the fall of the Republic, the Grassi family – assimilating their history to that of much more ancient Venetian families – starts to go towards a decline that will lead to the loss of their fortress in the lagoon. In 1840, the old Venetian ducates do not circulate anymore, so Spiridione Papadopoli, who works for a financial society, buys the palace for the sum of 140 thousands of Austrian lire; the almost centenary structures are restored and a fresco depicting the union between Venice and Austria goes besides the Grassi’s motto («Concordia res parvae crescunt; discordia etiam maximae dilabuntur»: in harmony little things grow, in disagreement even greatest things degenerate). Four years later, the celebrated opera singer Angelo Poggi buys it for 176 thousands lire and immediately resells it for 240 thousands. An Austrian family will arrive, the Schöfft, as good in doing business as was the opera singer.

Transformed into a hotel (first it was called «Imperatore d’Austria», then «Hôtel de la Ville»), the palace sees a decade of relative peace, until a new buyer, the baron Simeone de Sina, chooses to operate on the building new and heavy alterations. But it is with the new century and with the new owners (the Stucky family, owners of the mill at the Giudecca), that at Palazzo Grassi come electricity and even a lift, inserted in 1908. There is a new turbolent period, and then the palace is bought by a company of the Cini group, and then by the Società Immobiliare Veneta, the Venetian Real Estate Society, that in 1949 makes of it the seat of an international Centre for arts and traditions. It is the beginning of a cultural (or, at least, expositive) season, that will reach its climax with the arrival, in 1984, of the Fiat group.

Sterilized and equipped as a functional container by the two architects Aulenti-Foscarithe Palazzo goes towards an uninterrupted series of expositions-events, exhibitions for schoolboys: the Phoenicians, the Etrurians, the Celts; and big monographic expositions: Duchamp, Modigliani, Balthus. To the last exhibition on Salvador Dalì follows the withdrawal of the Fiat group and the fervent work to get hold of one big slice of the Palazzo. There was an attempt of buying it on part of Terruzzi, king of Nichel of Bordighera, but it did not go well (while at the beginning of February he seemed to hold a really high percentage). It now seems that the agreement with the French tycoon François Pinault is definitive, even though it has not been said the last word yet. The board of directors gave the approval for the agreement, but they delayed the ratification of the decision to 29 April, in front of the members’assembly and with the new mayor. The show must go on.