Beside the basilica, overlooking the piazzetta dei Leoncini, the Palazzo Patriarcale is the seat of Venice’s curia — but it was born as a wing of secular power: in the early 17th century Bartolomeo Manopola built it to house the grand hall where the Signoria and the Senate held banquets, connected to the doge’s apartments by an elevated passageway behind the basilica’s apses.