Gallerie di Palazzo Leoni Montanari

From the outside it looks like a bank, but a treasure beyond accountants’ imagining awaits inside the Gallerie di Palazzo Leoni Montanari. Ascend past the nymphs along the extravagant stuccoed staircase to grand salons filled with Canaletto’s misty lagoon landscapes and Pietro Longhi society satires such as Tutors of Venier’s House, which shows a sassy child with hand on hip wearing out exasperated tutors collapsed in their chairs. Upstairs is Banca Intesa’s superb collection of some 400 Russian icons, gorgeously spotlit in darkened galleries with a recording of soft Gregorian chants setting the scene. Each room elicits audible gasps: bright-eyed saints haloed in silver peer from 16th-century doors; 19th-century menologies show 99 miniature saints with detailed heads no larger than pencil erasers; and a phalanx of bejewelled, miraculous Madonna icons makes you understand why bags must be left in ground-floor lockers. Such a collection is rare anywhere, especially outside Russia, and public access is generous given the immense value of these works.