Gradenigo

The Gradenigo were one of the oldest and most powerful Venetian patrician houses, traditionally one of the twelve apostolic families present at the birth of the duchy. Legend traced them to Ravenna or Transylvania by way of Aquileia and the founding of Grado, from which their name was said to derive. They are documented in Venetian politics from the later ninth century.

The family gave the Republic three doges. Pietro Gradenigo, doge from 1289, carried through the Serrata of 1297, confining council membership to a noble caste; on his death in 1311 Venice lay under papal interdict and he was buried in an unmarked grave on Murano. Earlier Marco Gradenigo was podestà of Constantinople when the Byzantines retook it in 1261.

Bartolomeo, a wealthy merchant, was doge from 1339 to 1342; Giovanni was elected in 1355 after Marino Faliero's execution and made peace with Genoa. A branch in Crete joined the revolt of 1363 to 1366, while later Gradenigo became patriarchs of Aquileia and Venice in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.