View of the main hall

The palace, now owned by the Università Ca’ Foscari, was acquired by the old, noble Venetian Dolfin family in 1621. After a succession of projects to expand and modernize it, in 1710 the building finally achieved magnificence through a new restoration, designed by Domenico Rossi. The commissioner of the renovation was Daniele III Dolfin. The decoration of the main hall (salone) was executed by Nicolò Bambini with the collaboration of the quadratura painter Antonio Felice Ferrari.

The decoration contains an elaborate, multiform iconographic program on the vault. It celebrates the virtues of the Dolfin family that distinguished itself at the end of the seventeenth century, in politics, military and the world of letters.