The earliest foundations of this prestigious palace on the wide Cannaregio canal, close to where it meets Canal Grande, date back to the late 1600s. However, it was not until 1750, with the commissioning of the frescoes in the ballroom by the great Venetian artist Giambattista Tiepolo, that the palace reached its current splendour.

The building is named after the Labia family: rich merchants from Catalogna who, in 1646, bought the right to enter the Venetian nobility (paying a very high price for this privilege). Indeed, in the 1600s, the Venetian Republic was on the brink of bankruptcy owing to its wars against the Turks and started to offer rich bourgeois families the chance to become nobles in exchange for huge sums.
The Labia family was one of only a few who could afford to build such an expensive palace in the impoverished Venice of the 1700s.

Today the building belongs to the RAI (Italian State Television), having bought it in 1964 and subsequently restoring it.

1600 - 1700 - CANNAREGIO - rev. 0.1.6