Events at the Warwick Venice Centre

The annual Humfrey Butters public lecture will be taking place at the Warwick Venice Centre on November 20th, 2025 at 17:00. This year's lecture celebrates the legacy of Humfrey Butters, along with the University's 60th Anniversary, and is part of the One World Warwick programme. Prof. Deborah Howard will be giving a talk entitled Venetian palace architecture ‘inside-out’. Click "more" to see the full poster and read the abstract. The talk will be followed by a small reception.

Spaces are limited. Please email venice@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window to RSVP.

Abstract: Venetian palace architecture ‘inside-out’

This lecture will propose that the ‘typical’ plan of Venetian palaces evolved as a pragmatic response to the particular system of inheritance of the Venetian Republic, in which all the male heirs were expected to cohabit in a family partnership known as a ‘fraterna’. How did the interior layout of the palace allow flexibility in the family’s accommodation down the generations?

In most cases the ‘fraterna’ lasted only one generation before being dissolved, and by the sixteenth century the ownership of the large palaces was becoming fragmented. As a result, some testators began to impose conditions of fedecommesso (entail) to keep a particular palace within the ownership of the family, or even to impose the system of primogeniture to prevent the subdivision of the house. What was the impact of these developments on the planning of new palaces in Cinquecento Venice?

L’architettura dei palazzi veneziani ‘inside-out’

Questa conferenza proporrà che la pianta "tipica" dei palazzi veneziani si sia evoluta come risposta pragmatica al particolare sistema ereditario della Repubblica di Venezia, in cui tutti gli eredi maschi erano tenuti a vivere insieme in una società familiare o "fraterna". In che modo la disposizione del palazzo garantiva flessibilità per la sistemazione della famiglia nel corso delle generazioni?

Nella maggior parte dei casi la "fraterna" durava solo una generazione prima di essere sciolta, e nel XVI secolo la proprietà delle grandi case iniziò a frammentarsi. Di conseguenza alcuni testatori iniziarono a imporre condizioni di fedecommesso per impedire che una casa di particolare pregio uscisse dalla proprietà della famiglia, o addirittura a imporre

Speaker Bio:

Deborah Howard is Professor Emerita of Architectural History in the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art, and a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2010, and is a foreign member of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Her principal research interests are the art and architecture of Venice and the Veneto; music and architecture in the Renaissance; and the relationship between Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean. Her books include The Architectural History of Venice (1980, 1992);Venice & the East (2000); Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice (with Laura Moretti, 2009); Venice Disputed (2011); and The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy (with Mary Laven and Abigail Brundin, 2018). Her recent Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship resulted in the book Proto-Industrial Architecture in the Veneto in the Age of Palladio (2021, also published in Italian) and the subsequent exhibition Acqua, Terra, Fuoco at the Palladio Museum in Vicenza (2022-23). This project received a Europa Nostra European Heritage award.