Celsi

The Celsi were a patrician family of Venice, traditionally said to have come from Ravenna, whose name first appears in the documents in 1122. Pietro Celsi commanded galleys in Enrico Dandolo's reconquest of Zara in 1202.

The house usually played only a modest part in Venetian public life, so the election of Lorenzo Celsi as doge in 1361, after he had led Venetian fleets against Genoa, came as a surprise. As doge he crushed the revolt of Saint Titus in Crete, whose leaders had tried to set up an independent state, and he died in office in 1365.

Later Celsi mostly held colonial and provincial posts, though three brothers of the house fought in the campaign that ended at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. The family line died out with Francesco Maria Celsi in 1789.