Rare Venice Property on St. Mark's Square Hits the Market

You go to Venice for the water. That’s the whole point: the highly photogenic idiosyncrasy of an ancient city where everyone goes about much of their day-to-day lives in a floating fashion. “Everyone here wants a view of the water and it’s all about seeing the action,” says Michelangelo Ravagnan, founder of eponymous luxury real estate agency Ravagnan’s, whose own daily outings have recently revealed a surprise visitor. “I was on my boat, taking a client to see a private island, when a dolphin emerged right next to us, in front of St. Mark’s Square,” says Ravagnan of the bottlenose beauty nicknamed Mimmo who—despite the hectic comings and goings of the many vaporetti, traghetti and gondole that ferry residents and tourists across the waterway—has taken up residence in the lagoon. For humans who share Mimmo’s urge to be close to the Piazza San Marco—which is about 30 million of them every year, flocking to see such world-famous landmarks as the flamboyant 9th-century St. Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace and Venice’s tallest building, the Campanile di San Marco (St. Mark’s Bell Tower)—Ravagnan has a property unlike any other within his clutches. “This is the kind of property that a Venetian real estate agent dreams of handling for an entire lifetime,” he says, not a little breathlessly, of what is, without doubt, a rare opportunity in a world-class location. The property in question—accessed out of sight of the tourist hoards, via a tiny backstreet—sits within another of the Piazza’s much-photographed historic buildings, the Procuratie Vecchie. This 12th-century building, remodeled in the 16th century, was home to the offices and residences of the city’s most important officials, after the Doge (elected head of state). Then in 2022, it was opened to the public for the first time in 500 years, with exhibition spaces, a café and library with postcard views over the square. Before that, few had seen much of what lay behind its famous façade. Among the historic arches at ground level is Ristorante Quadri, an institution in St. Mark’s Square since 1831 and now presided over by Max Alajmo, who, in 2022, became the world’s youngest chef to win three Michelin stars. To see what Ravagnan is proposing, though, you need to look up two floors, to a run of 17 large windows similarly framed by stone arches, with porthole-like windows above. Peer further upwards and you’ll spot a wooden-framed terrace—a distinctively Venetian altana—with views over the square where, in 1609, Galileo changed the course of astronomy when he unveiled his telescope to the Doge of Venice in the bell tower. The square is also where, in 1934, Mussolini and Hitler had their first, unfortunately epoch-changing, face-to-face meeting. Where, in 1966, it was flooded by six feet of acqua alta (high water). And in 1989, where Pink Floyd played a free concert to an excitable audience of 200,000 from a floating stage in St. Mark’s basin. As you’ll gather, from up here on the second floor of this property, which spans more than 10,700 square feet over three floors, you don’t just have clear views—bookended by the towering presence of the Doge’s Palace and Campanile—of the basin, across to tiny San Giorgio Maggiore island. You have a rare perch where you can see and touch history. “You can buy a trophy asset that you can’t find anywhere else in Venice,” Ravagnan says. “Noble families often hold on to their homes here for 100 years. That’s why this is so incredible. I am selling a part of Venetian history and you can hardly put a value on it.” Needs must, though, when you’re a realtor, and based on other deals done in recent years—and the vendor’s desire to sell (it’s owned by a company in liquidation and shifting all its real estate assets, “leaving the most beautiful and most important to last,” says Ravagnan)—the property has a price tag of €10 million (around $11.6 million). “This is big news,” he adds. “It was originally valued at around €17 million ($19.7 million) when the company that owns it originally thought about selling. We’re giving the opportunity for an investor to make an amazing deal in the best location ever at a fair price.” “Noble families often hold on to their homes here for 100 years. That’s why this is so incredible… you can hardly put a value on it.” Michelangelo Ravagnan Priced into that figure is the need to renovate the property—most likely from scratch. Serving as its owner-company’s showcase for Murano glassware in recent years, it has recently been emptied of its magnificent contents, including dozens of brightly coloured chandeliers dangling from the cathedral-like ceilings of its two, voluminous piano nobile rooms—the floor, in finest Venetian tradition, dedicated to entertaining, dancing and generally showing off to the aristocratic great and good. Gone, too, are the wall-to-wall glass cases filled with a kaleidoscopic panoply of beautiful vases and glassware. What remains, among the high, decorative wooden-beamed ceilings and traditional Venetian stone floors found in all the best palazzi, and large stone fireplaces is a (relatively) blank canvas for a buyer to turn into a trophy commercial, retail or events space. Or, most excitingly, you could convert it back to residential use, which the city’s heritage department would support, according to Ravagnan. “They want to encourage investors to turn commercial properties back into homes as there are only about 50,000 residents left,” he says of the population of the centro storico—central Venice—which is about half what it was 50 years ago, and continues to fall. The Italian studio of the celebrated British architect David Chipperfield was behind the Procuratie Vecchie’s recent transformation—and no doubt whoever buys this private property within the building will call in an architect of note to dream up its next incarnation. “The buyer would need to work with the heritage department to see how you could arrange the rooms. You could have several bedrooms, with ensuite bathrooms. You would put your bedrooms at the back and keep the main, large rooms overlooking the square—maybe turning one of them into the kitchen,” Ravagnan suggests. Nothing needs changing, however, about its greatest selling point: its prime position on the north side of St. Mark’s Square, with a view of the lagoon. Look carefully and you may just spot Mimmo.