Procuratie

The Procuratie are three connected buildings on St Mark’s Square in Venice. They are also connected to St Mark’s Clocktower. They are historic buildings over arcades, the last of them completed, to finish off the square, under Napoleon’s occupation. The oldest of the buildings is the Procuratie Vecchie on the north side of the Square, built as a two-storey structure in the twelfth century, to house the offices and apartments of the procurators of San Marco. The Procuratie Nuove, on the south side of the Square was begun in 1586 by Vincenzo Scamozzi in a more strictly Classical style and completed by Longhena in 1640, designed to afford more space to offices connected with the procurators. The two buildings originally had wings on the west side of the Square, separated only by a small church. In about 1810, the wings and the church were demolished and replaced by the third building, the Napoleonic Wing of the Procuraties. It was designed by Giuseppe Maria Soli in a Neoclassical manner. Today, the Napoleonic Wing and part of the Procuratie Nuove house the Correr Museum. In 2017, English architect Sir David Chipperfield was appointed to supervise renovation of the Procuratie Vecchie.