A massive head is over the door, and Pope Clement XIII was born here.

A little green garden adjoins--the Giardinetto Infantile--and next is a boarded-up dolls' house, and next the Miani or Palazzo Coletti, with two busts on it, and then the lovely Ca' d'Oro, that exquisite riot of Gothic richness.
The history of the Ca' d'Oro--or golden house, so called from the prevalence of gold in its ornamentation--is melancholy.

It was built by the two Bons, or Buons, of the Doges' Palace for Pietro Contarini in 1425.

It passed through various hands, always, one imagines, declining in condition, until at the end of the eighteenth century it was a dramatic academy, and in the middle of the last century the dancer Taglioni lived in it and not only made it squalid but sold certain of its treasures.

Of its famous internal marble staircase, for example, no trace remains.