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Giovanni Dolfin, sole heir of his father's immense fortune and follower of doge Andrea Gritti, became 'Proveditore generale in campo' in 1529 and became acquainted with the architect Michele Sanmicheli. During Dolfin's time as Podesta of Verona, Sanmicheli was commissioned with the erection of the Porta Nuova and a new portal for the palazzo podestarile. But when Dolfin returned to Venice in 1536 and intended to rebuild his residence in the parish of San Salvador near the Rialto, it was not Sanmicheli, but Jacopo Sansovino who planned the new representative Palazzo Dolfin. It was Sansovino's second grand palace after the Palazzo Corner della Ca'Granda.
Already in the seventeenth century, the Dolfin rent out the palace. From the early eighteenth century, the rich Manin family rented the first floor, and acquired the whole palace in 1787 - ten years before the fall of the republic.
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