Punta della Dogana Site Features

Fortune on the globe

The weathervane group of 1677-78, by Bernardo Falcone, is the building's signature: two crouching bronze Atlases supporting a gilded sphere, with a figure of Fortune above holding a sail-like sheet that turns her with the wind. Reading her direction from the water told approaching crews what the wind was doing at the mouth of the Grand Canal.

Ando's intervention

The 2009 conversion is deliberately legible as an insertion rather than a restoration. Ando left the 17th-century brick walls and roof trusses exposed and set free-standing polished concrete planes inside them, so the old shell and the new galleries never quite touch -- an approach that leaves the customs house readable as a customs house.

The point itself

The paved apron around the building is public and open at all hours, with no ticket. It is one of the few places in Venice where the Grand Canal, the Giudecca Canal, the Bacino di San Marco and San Giorgio Maggiore are all visible at once.