The majority of palaces in Venetian were built in the Gothic style. The most famous is the Doge’s Palace, with its elegant arches built in Istrian stone and refined ornamentation giving the façade a light look, almost as though made of lace.
This style is found throughout the old city and is distinguished by the ogee arches and decorative windows. The ogee arch (i.e. a pointed arched) became popular in the 1300s, the Gothic Age, as a new highly visible element marking the switch from the Byzantine style in the 1200s. It often appears in a Venetian upturned keel or humped-back version.

Like the Doge’s Palace, Ca' Foscari is another great example of the Venetian-Gothic style from the 15th Century, with its façade in sculpted Istrian stone and ogee arches, whose intertwined ribs create a delicate ornamental pattern. Here the Gothic style is enhanced with 3- and 4-leaf clover motifs around the windows and on the elegant loggia, as well as the capitals with their floral, animal and human face motifs. The façade of Gothic palaces is nearly always integrated with other decorative motifs, such as tracery.
Many scholars see a poorly concealed Oriental influence in the Gothic style that developed in Venice.

1100 - 1200  -   - rev. 0.1.5