Valeriano Pastor

In the 1980s, the Querini Stampalia Foundation faced a critical moment: the magnificent Renaissance palace, home to the library and museum, was at risk of decline due to increasingly serious financial difficulties.

As Carlo Ottolenghi, advisor to the Foundation at the time, said, a true "reclassification of the Querini ship" was needed, a decisive intervention to get the entire complex back on course.

Architect Valeriano Pastor rose to the challenge. Between the 1980s and 1990s, he rethought and renewed the spaces, creating new pathways that finally gave unity and coherence to what had previously been a fragmented structure.

When Pastor arrived, the situation was complicated: each activity of the Foundation was scattered without a clear organizing thread.

On the first floor was the library; the museum was little more than an awkward addition on the second floor; cultural events were barely concentrated on the ground floor; and the offices were crammed into whatever spaces were still available.

Pastor’s mission was to unify everything, transforming a disjointed collection of spaces into a fluid and functional complex.

The key element of his intervention was a monumental staircase connecting the different levels of the building. It was not just a physical passage but a true fulcrum, bringing all the facets of the Foundation into communication.

From a simple vertical connection, it became a point of reference—a kind of “spinal column” that gave structure and continuity to the entire complex.

The staircase, with its small porthole-style windows, evokes the keel of a ship cutting vertically through the space—a subtle tribute to the Foundation’s history and its need to navigate toward the future.

Pastor also opens a passage between the café and the garden and builds a covered walkway connecting the palace to two nearby buildings, now used as book storage for the library. In this way, every part of the Foundation becomes accessible and integrated into an organic system.

The architect reimagines the space while respecting tradition and projecting it toward new possibilities. An approach that still today allows the Querini Stampalia Foundation to remain a living space, in constant dialogue between past and present.