The Emperor Joseph II stayed here.

So much for fact.

I like far more to remember the Christmas dinner eaten here--only, alas, in fancy, yet with all the illusion of fact--by Browning and a Scandinavian dramatist named Ibsen, brought together for the purpose by the assiduous Mr.Gosse, as related with such skill and mischief by Mr.Max Beerbohm.
Next the Rezzonico is the commonplace Nani; then a tiny calle; and then an antiquity store, one of the three adjoining palaces of the great Giustiniani family, in the second of which once lived Richard Wagner.
But first a word as to the Giustiniani's great feat, in the twelfth century, of giving every male member to the Republic.

It happened that in 1171 nearly all the Venetians in Constantinople were massacred.

An expedition was quickly despatched to demand satisfaction for such a deed, but, while anchored at Scio, the plague broke out and practically demolished this too, among those who perished being the Giustiniani to a man.