The Palace housing the Museum is an unfinished building, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, known precisely for this negative characteristic of being an “unfinished Palace”.
Begun in 1748, it was never completed, and was eventually purchased in 1948 by Peggy Guggenheim, who made it her home for the following thirty years, housing her extensive collection of artworks, which she continued to add to during her travels around the world.
Open to the public since 1951, it houses over 300 works, to which is added a small collection of works from Africa, Oceania and other Eastern countries.
The year after her death in 1979, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, in accordance with Peggy's will, opened the palace and the collection to the public.
