Palazzo van Axel is a magnificent Gothic building that overlooks the most beautiful Church in Venice, the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli by the architect Pietro Lombardo. The Palace was built between 1473 and 1479 by order of Nicolò Soranzo with material recovered from a pre-existing palace of the Gradenigo family and then passed to the Venier and Sanudo family and finally in 1652 to the van Axel, Dutch merchants from Axel on the outskirts of Ghent In 1920 the last heirs of the van Axel family sold the property to the famous antiquarian Count Dino Barozzi, the first superintendent of the Fine Arts of Venice in united Italy. The frescoes on the external walls of the court are rare evidence of the decorative richness of Venetian noble palaces in the fifteenth century. Hidden within the walls of Palazzo van Axel are the two famous courts which, due to their extraordinary beauty, have been the set of several films including Romeo and Juliet, winner of the Golden Lion at the 17th Venice International Film Festival and Casanova with Heath Ledger, Sienna Miller and Jeremy Irons. Even today the Palace is privately owned and it is possible to visit it to admire how one of the city's architectural treasures has been preserved over the centuries