The article deals with the protocol and artistic program of Nicholas I in Venice, the last stop on his tour of Italy in 1845. There Nickolas I managed to resolve the problem of the marriage of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, his daughter. As a statesman, he deeply felt Venice, be informed in the history of Venetian statehood, and the common cultural code that united Russia and the former Republic of St. Mark. He knew well and highly appreciated the sights of Venice, traced the history of Russian-Italian relations from Peter I’s trip to Europe, and therefore the loss of independence by the Venetian Republic at the end of the 18th century upset him. However, he considered the fact that Venice played a unique role in the history of Italian art, and he managed to acquire and order some things on the shores of the Lagoon, he received a lot of experience in working with marble, etc. At the same time, Nicholas I, like Goethe, was uncomfortable in Venice, where “dolce far niente” reigned, there were no carriages and no solid ground. The article uses unknown archival documents from the repositories of Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Vatican, as well as rare foreign and Russian publications, although there were still few Russian memoirs and recollections of Venice in 1845.