Ca’ Foscari University, established on August 6th, 1868 as a Business School (the first in Italy and the second in Europe), is a public university based in Venice, in northern Italy.

The historical seat of the university is Ca’ Foscari, a Venetian Gothic palace overlooking the widest bend of the Grand Canal (in Venetian dialect, Ca’ is the abbreviated form of ‘casa’, which means ‘house’ in Italian). The palace lie in the ‘sestiere’ of Dorsoduro, one of the six large neighbourhoods that the city is divided into, and another building formerly stood there, the so-called ‘Casa delle Due Torri’ (House of the Two Towers), which belonged first to Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, the Prince of Mantua and Vice-captain of the Serenissima Army, and then to Francesco Sforza, the Duke of Milan. In 1452 the House of the Two Towers was put up for auction and bought by the doge Francesco Foscari, who had it knocked down to build a more imposing building as a symbol of the prestige of the Foscari family (from which the university took its name).

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