This palace located on the Canal Grande just after Rialto bridge is now the site of the Municipio di Venezia. Its story is fascinating.
In the XIV century, Pietro Lusignano, king of Cyprus, asked Federico Corner for help as his island was under the threat from the Ottoman Empire and he had no money nor army. In 1363, he was Federico's guest in this palace and in exchange for the 70.000 ducats that Federico gave him, Pietro donated to him the title of Sword Knight and Cypriot manor of Piscopia. Here, the Corner family was growing and refining sugar cane with total exemption from the taxes for many years until 1571when Cyprus was taken by the Turks and the family had to leave the island.
In Cyprus, Caterina Cornaro who was from Venice and belonged to the Cornaro family from the line of San Cassiano, was Queen of the island for 15 years, between 1474 and 1489, after the death of her husband Giacomo II Lusignano, the King of Cyprus and Armenia.
Two centuries later, in this palace lived Elena Lucrezia Corner Piscopia, one of Caterina Cornaro's relatives. Her father, Giovanni Battista, Procurator of St. Mark, married a plebeian woman Zanetta (Giovanna) Boni and had five children with her. He was a man of power and high culture (his grandfather Giacomo Alvise was also a man of high culture and he was friend with Galileo Galilei) but because of this marriage his children were initially denied the entry in the Golden Book of Patricians of Venice. But Giovanni Battista did not give up and eventually succeeded in having his children's names recorded in the book.He also succeeded in supporting his daughter Elena in her studies, providing the best teachers for her since when she was only seven year old.
In 1678, when Elena was 32, she was the first woman in the world to get a university degree. Her degree was in philosophy in the cathedral in Padua, with a dissertation about Aristotle's Analytics and Physics. Elena studied many other subjects (theology, maths and astronomy) and she was known as "Oraculum Septiligue" as she could speak Ancient Greek, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Spanish, French and Arabic. She became a maths lecturer at the university in Padua. Later she became a Benedictine Oblate and dedicate the rest of her short life to ministering to the poor.
Link su Elena Lucrezia Cornaro http://babilonia61.com/tag/giovanni-battista-cornaro-piscopia/
http://www.answers.com/topic/elena-cornaro-piscopia
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