Carlo Goldoni's House Venezia

Je suis né à Venise, l'an 1707, dans une grande et belle maison, située entre le pont de Nomboli et celui de donna onesta, au coin del rue de Ca' Centanni, sur le paroisse de St. Thomas (I was born in Venice, in 1707, in a large and beautiful house situated between the Ponte dei Nomboli and the Ponte della Donna Onesta, at the corner of Calle di Ca' Centanni, in the parish of San Tomà).
This is how the eighty-year-old Carlo Goldoni, by then a resident in Paris for twenty-five years, recalls where he was born at the opening of his Mémoires. Ca' Centani, or Centanni - now better known as Casa di Carlo Goldoni - was built in the fifteenth century and has maintained all the features of Venetian Gothic architecture of that period. The particularly interesting aspects of the building are the three-part canal facade with its richly-decorated four-arched window, and the entrance giving onto Calle dei Nomboli, which leads into an atmospheric courtyard with an external two-flight staircase bound by a banister in small columns of Istrian stone.
Initially owned by the Rizzo family, the palazzo was rented to the Centanni family and became the centre of a very active artistic/literary Accademia in the 16th cent. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Carlo Alessandro Goldoni - the playwright's paternal grandfather and a notary from Modena - took up residence here. As mentioned above, Carlo Goldoni himself was born here in 1707 (25 February), and the building would remain the family home until 1719.
In 1914 Aldo Ravà, a noted scholar of eighteenth-century Venice - together with Count Piero Foscari and Commendatore Antonio Pellegrini - bought the palazzo from its owner, Contessa Ida Manassero Camozzo, with the idea of using it to house a museum dedicated to the great playwright and to the history of Italian theatre. The project came to nothing because of the outbreak of war, and then in 1931 Ca' Centanni was donated to the City Council to be restored and - with a slight variation on the original scheme - turned into a Goldoni museum and a study centre for matters relating to theatre. Again, war held up the work, which was only completed in 1953, with the public opening in June of that year. The building housed a small museum of Goldoni memorabilia and artefacts relating to Venetian theatre, but focused primarily on its role as a study centre, with constant additions to its library and archive.

The Museum
Today, the museum section of Ca' Goldoni is a magical , theatrical place, in which all the resources of modern museum design have been exploited to safeguard the fabric of this unique Gothic palace and also provide visitors - especially young visitors - with a interactive layout that is both informative and pleasurable. Particular attention has been focused on the performance of theatrical works, with each room having large television screens that show a number of various productions of Goldoni's work (taken from Italian State Television archives and other sources). The layout combines the most recent computer and video technology with traditional displays of the works of art and documents that formed the core of the original collection.
The exhibition spaces on the first floor - together with the reception area on the ground floor - have been designed so that they can accommodate all the various types of visitors to the museum: scholars, families, tourists, school groups. There are also all the necessary facilities which might be required by disabled visitors.
As well as being an exhibition space, however, the Casa del Carlo Goldoni continues to function as an important study centre with modern facilities and equipment.