Scala Contarini del Bovolo

Venice has grander staircases hidden behind palace doors, but none that turns itself inside out the way this one does. Tucked into a narrow calle near Campo Manin in the San Marco sestiere, the Contarini palace wears its stair on the outside: a slender cylindrical tower wrapped in a spiral of open arcades, each loggia climbing a little higher than the one before until the whole thing ends in a belvedere above the rooftops. Venetians called the shape a bovolo — a snail shell — and the nickname stuck so firmly that it became part of the family's name.

The palace itself dates from the fifteenth century, a city residence for a branch of the Contarini, one of the oldest patrician families of the Republic. The stair came later, in 1499, when brothers of the family commissioned it to dress up the facade overlooking a small courtyard. It is usually credited to Giovanni Candi, though some sources give the design to Giorgio Spavento. Either way, the result is a hybrid that could only have happened in Venice at that moment: Gothic habits of lightness, Renaissance round arches and pale stone columns, and a Byzantine taste for layered, lace-like surfaces set against warm brick.

What to look for is the rhythm. From the courtyard the arcades read as a single rising ribbon, the white columns stacking into diagonal lines against the red. Climbing inside, the view changes floor by floor, and at the top the reward is one of the few elevated panoramas in the centre of the city — a sea of terracotta roofs, chimney pots and campanili, with the domes of San Marco and the bell tower close enough to feel within reach. Orson Welles liked the stair enough to cast it as Brabantio's house in his 1952 Othello.

After a restoration that began in 2015, the staircase has been open to visitors since February 2016.

Getting there

The palazzo stands in the heart of Venice, about 0.3 km from the city centre, in the quiet lanes between Campo San Bartolomeo near the Rialto and Campo Santo Stefano; Campo Manin is the easiest landmark to aim for on foot. Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE) is about 8 km away across the lagoon on the mainland shore. From the Rialto area it is a few minutes' walk through the alleys — follow the signs for "Scala del Bovolo".