1840 view of the so-called "Palazzo di Venezia", the former embassy of the Republic of Venice in Constantinople, which had been taken over by Austria in 1797. With a short interruption, it was to be the Austrian, then Austro-Hungarian embassy from 1798 to 1918, at which time the building was ceded to Italy. Palazzo di Venezia was to be the Italian embassy until 1936 when the capital of Turkey was transferred to Ankara. The Austrian post office in Constantinople was located inside the embassy, then from the 1850s in an annex on the embassy grounds, until it was finally moved to a building on the Galata waterfront in the early 1880s. Pencil drawing by Viennese orientalist and amateur painter Albrecht Krafft (1816-1847).