Grassi Palace

This guide to Grassi Palace in Venice follows billionaire Francois Pinault's abandoned dream of a private museum in Paris, derailed by years of bureaucracy and court challenges, and his decision in 2005 to buy this eighteenth-century palace on the Grand Canal instead. It traces the building's earlier life as Giorgio Massari's last great Grand Canal palace and as Gianni Agnelli's exhibition hall, before Pinault brought in architect Tadao Ando to rework it. Ando was the very architect Pinault had first hired for the abandoned Paris project.