Visitors to Venice cannot help but wander around admiring the facades of endless palazzi, perhaps wondering what they are like on the inside. The Biennale offers the opportunity to go inside a few of these magnificent buildings when they open to the public for several months to display art exhibitions, but there are many more buildings which the tourist can never explore.

It’s hard to imagine that people actually live in these magical palaces, and even harder to have a sense of what everyday life is like when all your front windows look out onto the Grand Canal, and your kitchen has a vista of the rooftops, pepper pot chimneys and campanile of the most beautiful city in the world.