Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, the home of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, seen from the Grande Canale, March 2025.

My visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy

A place of gentle beauty and a refuge from the bustling city

Believing in my dreams

Visiting the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, had been an unattainable and impossible dream of mine for a multitude of complicated reasons. It seemed that it just wasn’t to be.

So I thought for many years.

But then, last month, this dream came true. I found myself in Venice, practically by chance, visiting my brother. I had free time, and set myself on the path to fulfill this dream: to visit the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Claire Falkenstein, The Entrance Gates to Palazzo, 1961. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy.

Peggy’s vision

Peggy Guggenheim was born in the century before last, in 1898, into a wealthy New York family. Her status enabled her later in life to become the art collector and visionary she is known for today. Her legacy is breathtaking and awe-inspiring for art lovers all around the world.[1]

Peggy’s childhood was overshadowed by the early death of her father who perished with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Peggy was then only 14.[2]