On the rio of Ca’ Foscari, a stone’s throw from San Pantalon, Ca’ Dolfin — or Palazzo Secco Dolfin — hides behind its ’Roman-style’ Baroque facade, all white Istrian stone, one of the great banqueting halls of Venice: here the Dolfin brothers had Giambattista Tiepolo paint, between 1725 and 1729, ten canvases with stories of republican Rome — sold in 1872 for six thousand lire and today scattered between the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the Metropolitan in New York and the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna — and here in 1709 the King of Denmark, Frederick IV, was feted in one of the most memorable parties of the century.