Fondaco dei Turchi

In close contact with the Mediterranean Orient, Venice is the only European city which constantly received Muslim dignitaries and tradespeople. In 1612, the decision was taken by the Republican Senate to welcome merchants from the Ottoman Empire, who had been present for a long time in Venice, in a decent place. The choice was a palace built in 1227 on the Grand Canal by an Italian merchant, Pesaro Palmieri. Acquired by the city in 1381, it was used to accommodate illustrious persons, such as the dukes of Ferrare in the 14^th and 16^th centuries and the Byzantine Emperor John Paleologue in 1438. It was a fondaco between 1621 and 1838. Today it has become the Natural History Museum, and was greatly reworked by a restoration in the 19^th century.

Venice possesses several fondaci which received many merchant communities present in the city, the main commercial port of the Adriatic. In Islamic civilisation, these hotels are very widespread. Already present in Achaemenid Persia, they are evidenced from the beginning of Islam, and developed widely under the Great Seljuqs of Iran in the 11^th – 12^th centuries from Khorassan to the entire Muslim world. Located along main trade routes or in an urban context, far from a caravan stopover (approx. 30 km), these structures offered travellers and animals accommodation and storage space for merchandise. They have always been transactional places. The terminology which refers to them is extremely rich due to the large number of regions where they were erected: caravansary, khân, funduk, wakala all refer to the same type of building.

The original palace in which the fondaco was equipped was characteristic of Veneto-Byzantine architecture of the 13^th century. With an almost rectangular plan, it was situated perpendicular to the canal. The façade is the only restored element which remains faithful to the original. Fitted between two angle towers, it is organised on two levels: a loggia with eighteen arches rises above a portico with wide blind arcades which recall late Roman architecture. The merlons which crown it are characteristic of oriental influences inherent to Venetian architecture, present in the private and public city buildings: the Doges palace is one of the most famous examples. The brick walls are cladded with polychrome marble. When the palace was lent to Turkish merchants, the façade was fitted with a wall containing a door. The lateral towers were taken down, perhaps due to them being too ostentatious for a building lent to natives of an empire which was from time to time in conflict with the Republic of Venice.

Few documents describe the interior organisation of the fondaco. The arrangements of this Italian house were in any case successfully adapted to new uses. The ground floor was used for the storage of merchandise, the installation of an oratory and a place for washing. The three accommodation floors, accessed by a double staircase in stone located at the back of the ground floor court, were used for the same purpose all along. This organisation is very close to the one adopted by the fondaco dei Tedeschi, for German merchants, entirely rebuilt in 1506 (after a fire) based on the model of its Cairo equivalent, the wakala by al-Ghurî (1404-1405). All this is to show to what extent the similarities between these buildings were great, whether they were erected on one shore or the other of the Mediterranean.