Grand Canal palaces rank among the world’s most desirable real estate, and multi-coloured marble marvel Ca’ Dario casts a mesmerising reflection, which was famously painted by Claude Monet – but there’s a catch. Starting with the daughter of its original 15th-century owner, Giovanni Dario, an unusual number of its occupants have met untimely deaths. According to local legend, the palace is associated with at least seven deaths; gossips claim this effectively dissuaded Woody Allen from buying it in the late 1990s.
The former manager of The Who, Kit Lambert, moved out after complaining of being hounded by the palace's ghosts, and was found dead shortly after in 1981. One week after renting the place for a holiday in 2002, The Who’s bass player, John Entwhistle, died of a heart attack.
The palace isn't open to the public, but it can easily be spotted from the Grand Canal, just past the first small canal to the left of the Peggy Guggenheim. Look for the Renaissance frontage with three levels of arched windows abutted by three oculi surrounded by disks of coloured marble, with the Latin inscription 'Urbis Genio Ioannes Darius' below.
