Soranzo

The Soranzo were a Venetian patrician family, one of the twenty-four case vecchie that claimed descent from the ancient tribunes of the lagoon. Family legend derived them from the Roman gens Superantia, said to have fled Altino for Burano in 456.

Giovanni Soranzo, an admiral who raided the Genoese colony of Caffa in 1296, was elected Doge in 1312 and ruled until his death in 1328. The family financed the church of San Samuele and the facade of Santa Giustina in Venice.

At the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 Benedetto Soranzo commanded a galley and, mortally wounded with his crew wiped out, set fire to his ship rather than surrender. The San Trovaso branch died out in 1771, while the San Gregorio branch kept its Venetian palaces until the Republic fell in 1797.