.Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Perhaps surprisingly, one of Venice's most-visited museums is a collection of twentieth-century art. If you have cruised down the Grand Canal, you will probably have been struck by the unfinished Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, former home of heiress Peggy Guggenheim and now home to her art collection. This grand white palazzo of Istrian stone was built in the 1750s, but the work was never completed (either the money ran out, or that neighbours objected to the palace's scale) and the building remains a one-storey oddity. 

Peggy Guggenheim's father died in the Titanic, and with her inheritance she travelled around Europe, mingled with artists, collected their works and married one too: Max Ernst, whose 'The Robing of the Bride' is on display here. In the process she become famous for her art collection, her lifestyle and her exaggerated sunglasses. After the Second World War she bought this Venetian palace, perhaps seeing herself as the spiritual heir of a colourful previous owner, the Marchesa Luisa Casati, a flamboyant hostess and muse to earlier artists and writers. As well as setting up the art collection which is now so popular a tourist attraction, Guggenheim brought a dose of individualistic glamour to twentieth-century Venice, where she travelled around, an instantly-recognisable figure, in her private gondola. She died in 1979, and her ashes are buried in a corner of the garden alongside her pet dogs.