Ca' Foscari University of Venice (), or simply Ca' Foscari, is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

research university A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are "the key sites of Knowledge production modes, knowledge production", along with "intergenerational ...

and

business school A business school is a higher education institution or professional school that teaches courses leading to degrees in business administration or management. A business school may also be referred to as school of management, management school, s ...

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

, Italy. Since its foundation in 1868, it has been housed in the Venetian Gothic

palace A palace is a large residence, often serving as a royal residence or the home for a head of state or another high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome whi ...

of Ca' Foscari, from which it takes its name. The palace stands on the Grand Canal, between the

Rialto The Rialto is a central area of Venice, Italy, in the ''sestiere'' of San Polo. It is, and has been for many centuries, the financial and commercial heart of the city. Rialto is known for its prominent markets as well as for the monumental Ria ...

and

San Marco San Marco is one of the six sestiere (Venice), sestieri of Venice, lying in the heart of the city as the main place of Venice. San Marco also includes the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Although the district includes Piazza San Marco, Saint Mar ...

, in the

sestiere A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the title of (). Formed a ...

Dorsoduro Dorsoduro is one of the six sestiere (Venice), sestieri of Venice, in northern Italy. Dorsoduro includes the highest land areas of the city and also Giudecca island and Isola Sacca Fisola. Its name derives from the Italian language, Italian fo ...

, while the rest of the University is scattered around the historical centre. In addition to the historical centre of Venice, Ca' Foscari also has campuses in

Mestre Mestre () is a borough of the comune of Venice on the mainland opposite the historical island city in the region of Veneto, Italy. Administratively, Mestre forms (together with the nearby Carpenedo) the Municipalità di Mestre-Carpenedo, one ...

and

Treviso Treviso ( ; ; ) is a city and (municipality) in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 87.322 inhabitants (as of December 2024). Some 3,000 live within the Venetian wall ...

. Ca' Foscari was founded in 1868 after the annexation of the Veneto region in the

Kingdom of Italy The Kingdom of Italy (, ) was a unitary state that existed from 17 March 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia, Sardinia was proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed King of Italy, until 10 June 1946, when the monarchy wa ...

as the ''Regia Scuola Superiore di Commercio'' (Royal College of Commerce)''.'' As such, it is the second oldest business school in the world, after the Institut Supérieur de Commerce d'Anvers, founded in 1853. Ca' Foscari expanded throughout the 1900s and became a full-fledged university in 1968. It currently has eight departments and almost 21,000 students, and is Venice's biggest university. Its teaching and research is centred around economics & business,

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

, and

modern language A modern language is any human language that is currently in use as a native language. The term is used in language education to distinguish between languages which are used for day-to-day communication (such as French and German) and dead clas ...

History

Ca' Foscari was founded as the "Regia Scuola Superiore di Commercio" (Royal College of Commerce) by a Royal Decree dated 6 August 1868, and teaching commenced in December of the same year. The idea of establishing such a school had arisen after the annexation of the

Veneto Veneto, officially the Region of Veneto, is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the Northeast Italy, north-east of the country. It is the fourth most populous region in Italy, with a population of 4,851,851 as of 2025. Venice is t ...

to the new

in 1866, and was promoted by three people in particular: the

political economist Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources. The branch of social science that studies poli ...

Luigi Luzzatti Luigi Luzzatti (; 11 March 1841 – 29 March 1927) was an Italian financier, political economist, social philosopher, and jurist. He served as the 20th prime minister of Italy between 1910 and 1911. Luzzatti came from a wealthy and cultured Jew ...

, later

Prime Minister of Italy The prime minister of Italy, officially the president of the Council of Ministers (), is the head of government of the Italy, Italian Republic. The office of president of the Council of Ministers is established by articles 92–96 of the Co ...

; Edoardo Deodati,

senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or Legislative chamber, chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the Ancient Rome, ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior ...

of the Kingdom of Italy and vice-president of the

province of Venice The province of Venice () was a province in the Veneto region of Italy. Its capital was the city of Venice. It had an area of 2,467 km2, and a total population of 836,916 (2021). The province became the Metropolitan City of Venice by 1 Janu ...

; and the Sicilian political economist

Francesco Ferrara Francesco Ferrara (1810–1900) was an Italian economist, and political scientist. He helped introduce the classical economic theories of Adam Smith, David Ricardo David Ricardo (18 April 1772 – 11 September 1823) was a British politi ...

, director of the school for its first thirty years. The school was the first institute of higher education in

commerce Commerce is the organized Complex system, system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions that directly or indirectly contribute to the smooth, unhindered large-scale exchange (distribution through Financial transaction, transactiona ...

in Italy. It also had a diplomatic section to train and educate Diplomats and commercial consular staff for overseas service and international law. In addition, Ca' Foscari was also created to operate as a training college for secondary school teachers of commercial subjects. Foreign languages were taught from the start as well as the study of foreign cultures. The school was parallelled only by the Institut Supérieur de Commerce d'Anvers, founded in 1853 in

Antwerp Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

. Today, Ca' Foscari is still a specialised university for the study of business economics, humanitites and languages. Following the establishment of a national syllabus for university teaching in 1935, the Istituto Superiore di Economia e Commercio di Venezia, as it was by then called, was authorised to award four-year ''laurea'' degrees. In 1968 it obtained university status, and the name was changed to Università degli Studi di Venezia. In the following year two new faculties were created, of

industrial chemistry The chemical industry comprises the company, companies and other organizations that develop and produce industrial, specialty and other chemicals. Central to the modern world economy, the chemical industry converts raw materials (Petroleum, oil, ...

and of philosophy and letters. Currently, Ca' Foscari hosts eight strategic research centers: the Center for Cultural Heritage and Technology, the

Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change The Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) is an Italian research centre dedicated to climate and climate related research, including climate variability, its causes and consequences, carried out through Climate model, numerical mo ...

, the European Centre for Living Technology, th
Center for Humanities and Social Change
th
Institute for Global Challenges
th
Marco Polo Centre
th
Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities
and th
Venice Centre in Economic and Risk Analytics for Public Policies

Organisation

The university is divided into eight departments: * Economics * Philosophy and cultural heritage * Management * Environmental science, computer science and statistics * Molecular science and nanosystems * Linguistic and comparative cultural studies * Humanities * Asian and Mediterranean African studies It also hosts the European Centre for Living Technology as well as a Law Center.

Rankings

The

QS World University Ranking The ''QS World University Rankings'' is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with ''Times Hig ...

by subject has placed Ca’ Foscari of Venice among the top 100 universities in the world for modern languages, among the top 150 in the world for humanities, and among the top 200 in the world for economics and management. The university also ranked as the third best public university in Italy for their quality of research according to ANVUR (the National Agency for the Evaluation of University Research Systems) in 2018.

Notable alumni

Among the alumni of the university are: * Simone Albrigi, comic artist, known by the pen name “Sio” *

Michele Boldrin Michele Boldrin (; 20 August 1956) is an Italian-born academic, former politician, YouTuber, and economist working in the areas of economic growth, business cycles, technological progress, and intellectual property. He is the Joseph Gibson Hoy ...

, economist *

Carlo Carraro Carlo Carraro (born May 17, 1957, in Italy) is the chancellor of the University of Venice for the three-year period 2009–2012, with a two-year extension of his mandate in accordance to the Gelmini University Law bringing it up to summer 2014. He ...

, economist and Ca' Foscari's president between 2009 and 2014 * Paolo Costa, economist and politician * Giuseppe De'Longhi, businessman * Nicolò Degiorgis, artist, publisher, curator * Giuseppe Durato, manga artist * Barbara Frale, historian *

Massimiliano Frani Massimiliano Frani (10 January 1967 – 31 March 2023) was an Italian pianist, composer and music pedagogue. He founded the project MET – Music Education Therapy and was director of the Armoniæ Centro Internazionale di Musica e Cultura. He als ...

, pianist * Mario Fratti, playwright and drama critic * Lilli Gruber, politician, author, journalist and TV-personality * Carla Lavatelli, Italian-American artist * Beatrice Leanza, curator *

Giancarlo Ligabue Giancarlo Ligabue (30 October 1931 – 25 January 2015) was an Italian paleontologist, scholar, politician and businessman. Born in Venice, Ligabue graduated in economics at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice and in Geology at la Sorbonne, an ...

, palaeontologist and politician *

Ugo La Malfa Ugo La Malfa (16 May 1903 – 26 March 1979) was an Italian politician and an important leader of the Italian Republican Party (''Partito Repubblicano Italiano''; PRI). Early years and anti-fascist resistance La Malfa was born in Palermo, Sic ...

, politician * Rina Macrelli, screenwriter and essayist * Roberto Meneguzzo, banker and investor * Damiano Michieletto, opera director * Sara Moretto, politician * Lionello Perera, banker, patron of the arts *

Flaminio Piccoli Flaminio Piccoli (28 December 1915 – 11 April 2000) was an Italian politician. He was a member of Christian Democracy until its dissolution in 1994, then a member of the United Christian Democrats and finally of the Rebirth of Christian ...

, politician * Renzo Rosso, businessman, founder of the clothing brand Diesel *

Francesca Trivellato Francesca Trivellato (born 1970) is an Italian historian, focusing on cultural, economic and social history in the early modern period. Her publications have covered Italian history, Jewish history and trade and cultural networks. She is currentl ...

, historian *

Paul Watzlawick Paul Watzlawick (July 25, 1921 – March 31, 2007) was an Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communication theorist, and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he commented in the fields o ...

, philosopher and psychologist * Lella Vignelli, architect and designer *

Guglielmo Cinque Guglielmo Cinque (born 1948 in La Spezia) is an Italian linguist and professor of linguistics at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. He is one of the leading figures in modern minimalist syntax. Cinque studied literature and linguistics at the ...

, linguist

References

{{commons category, Università Ca' Foscari 1868 establishments in Italy Education in Venice Universities and colleges established in 1868

History

Organisation

Rankings

Notable alumni

See also

References