At the far north of Cannaregio, where the city thins out and begins to smell of the lagoon, the Fondamenta Gaspare Contarini (a fondamenta is a canalside walkway) runs alongside one of the most singular palaces in Venice: a long Renaissance front without symmetries, raised in the 16th century by the Contarini ’dal Zaffo’, the only patrician house that could boast a feudal title — they were, in fact, counts of Jaffa, in Palestine.