It was built for Marino Contarini, son of Antonio Contarini, Procurator of St Mark in the first half of '400. The previous building was partially demolished and incorporated into the new one. Ca'd'Oro is a very small but beautiful building, another example of Venetian Gothic and Byzantine motifs that typically shows the east. The owner's son, Peter, had to divide the building among his daughters and so the troubled history of the Ca 'd'Oro began.

In the eighteenth century it was owned by the Bressa family, while in the nineteenth century it has passed from hand to hand and was the object of profound changes and vandalism. Fortunately, these changes were undone when the baron Giorgio Franchetti bought the building. A new covered stair was built on the model of Palazzo Contarini’s Porta di Ferro.

The Well, the first self-employment work by Bartolomeo Bon, is original. In 1916, Giorgio Franchetti gifted the Ca'd'Oro of Venice and his collection of masterpieces of Renaissance art to the state, and the building was later converted into a museum. Outward appearance has several points of contact with the Ducal Palace as the shapes of the first floor of the tunnel and the band of embattled crown; they are in fact of the same period. The building is organized around an open court, which is located at the heart of which a marble shaft, an already mentioned work by Bartolomeo Bon.

During the works undertaken by Giorgio Franchetti, the patterned marble floor was created in the porch of the ground floor covering 350 sqm. It was Franchetti himself who drew the motifs and used precious stones from ancient Roman times to decorate. Franchetti's collection, housed in the building, includes masterpieces by Mantegna, Titian, Giorgione, Palmezzano, Guardi, Bordone, but there are bronzes and sculptures and other Venetian and Flemish paintings from the collection belonging to the state.