Dandolo

The Dandolo were a Venetian patrician family, traced to a merchant recorded around 1085; they rose in Venetian politics in the twelfth century and produced four doges. The first and greatest was Enrico Dandolo, elected in 1192 when already old and blind: he diverted the Fourth Crusade to the reconquest of Zara in 1202 and the sack of Constantinople in 1204, laying the foundations of Venice's colonial empire, and he died in that city in 1205 and was buried in Hagia Sophia.

His kinswoman Anna Dandolo married Stefan the First-Crowned and became queen of Serbia in 1217. Giovanni Dandolo held the dogeship from 1280 and Francesco Dandolo from 1328; the last was Andrea Dandolo, a former Padua law professor who ruled from 1343 and wrote Latin chronicles of Venice before dying in 1354.

Later Dandolo women served as dogaressas, among them Giovanna in 1457 and Zilia in 1556, and the house supplied the republic with admirals and diplomats.