Museum sights in The Veneto
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Palazzo Ducale
Don't be fooled by its genteel Gothic elegance: underneath all that lacy pink cladding, the doges' palace flexes serious muscle. The seat of Venice's government for nearly seven centuries, this powerhouse survived wars, conspiracies and economic crashes, and was cleverly restored by Antonio da Ponte (who also designed Ponte di Rialto) after a 1577 fire.
Exterior
Outside, the palazzo (mansion) mixes business with pleasure, capping a graceful colonnade with medieval capitals depicting key Venetian guilds. Facing the piazza, Zane and Bartolomeo Bon's 1443 Porta della Carta (Paper Door) served as a bulletin board for government decrees.
Courtyard
Sansovino's brawny statues of…
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Museo della Musica
Housed in the restored neoclassical Chiesa di San Maurizio, this collection of rare and curious 17th- to 19th-century instruments is accompanied by informative panels on the life and times of Venice’s Antonio Vivaldi. To hear these instruments in action, check out the kiosk with early-music CDs and concert tickets for Interpreti Veneziani, who fund this museum and play museum-piece instruments with modern verve around the corner at San Vidal.
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Museo Ebraico & Jewish Ghetto
This area in Venice was once a getto (foundry) on an island away from the main area of Cannaregio to contain the risk of fire – but its role as the designated Jewish quarter from the 16th to 18th centuries gave the word a whole new meaning. In accordance with the Venetian Republic’s 1516 decree, Jewish artisans and lenders stocked and funded Venice’s commercial enterprises by day, while at night and on Christian holidays, they were restricted to the gated island of the Ghetto Nuovo. If you scan the top floors of the buildings ringing the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, you can spot three synagogues, or schole (literally, ‘schools’), distinguished from the residential housing…
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Scuola Grande di San Rocco
Everyone wanted the commission to paint this building dedicated to the patron saint of the plague-stricken, so Tintoretto cheated: instead of producing sketches like rival Veronese, he gifted a splendid ceiling panel of patron St Roch, knowing it couldn't be refused or matched by other artists.
Upstairs
Old Testament scenes Tintoretto painted from 1575 to 1587 for the Sala Grande Superiore ceiling upstairs read like a modern graphic novel: you can almost hear the swoop! overhead as an angel dives down to feed ailing Elijah. Against the shadowy backdrop of the Black Death, eerie lightning-bolt illumination strikes Tintoretto's subjects in New Testament wall scenes.
Downstairs
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Palazzo Grimani
Just south of Campo Santa Maria Formosa, this light-filled palazzo has finally reopened to the public after nearly three decades. Built in the 1500s by Doge Antonio Grimani to house his remarkable collection of Graeco-Roman antiquities (most of which are now in Museo Correr), the lovingly restored palazzo houses high-calibre temporary exhibitions.
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Museo Storico Navale
Maritime madness spans four storeys and 42 rooms at this museum of Venice’s seafaring history, featuring scale models of the Venetian-built vessels as well as Peggy Guggenheim’s not-so-minimalist gondola. On the ground floor, you’ll find sprawling galleries of fearsome weaponry – cannons, blunderbusses, swords and sabres – with hardly any noticeable bloodstains. These big guns were rarely needed in Venice itself, since the shallows of the lagoon provided the city’s best protection against invaders. Also on the ground floor you’ll find 17th-century dioramas of forts and ports. They illustrate the incredible span of Venetian power across the Adriatic and…
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Palazzo Querini Stampalia
The outer shell of this palazzo dates from the first half of the 16th century, but the inside could not be more surprising: a 1963 bridge, 1940s entrance and garden, and a 1959 1st-floor library all designed by Scarpa, with noteworthy 1990s embellishments by Mario Botta.
Enter through the Botta-designed bookshop to get a free pass to the cafe and its garden. Design-savvy drinkers take their spritz with a twist of high modernism in the Carlo Scarpa–designed courtyard garden or the Mario Botta–designed Qcoffee Bar.
Alternately, buy a ticket and head upstairs to the 2nd-floor Museo della Fondazione Querini Stampalia. The museum occupies a series of sumptuous,…
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Museo di Torcello
Across the square from the cathedral in the 13th-century Palazzo del Consiglio is this museum dedicated to Torcello’s bygone splendours. Downstairs are early Byzantine mosaics painstakingly assembled from half-centimetre tesserae; upstairs is a daunting display of heavy medieval culinary irons, used by nuns to stamp holy host wafers.
A captivating collection of ancient curiosities is upstairs in the 11th- to 12th-century Palazzo dell’Archivio, opposite the Palazzo del Consiglio. Roman items unearthed at the now-vanished Altino include charming, enigmatic bronze miniatures: a poppy, a chicken’s claw, and a dolphin. Elegantly incised Egyptian bronze mirrors date from…
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Ca’ Pesaro
Like a Carnevale costume built for two, the stately exterior of this Baldassare Longhena–designed 1710 palazzo hides two quirky museums: the Galleria d’Arte Moderna and Museo d’Arte Orientale. At Galleria d’Arte Moderna three storeys of Venetian modern- art history begin with flag-waving early Biennales, showcasing Venetian landscapes and Venetian socialites by Venetian painters (notably Giacomo Favretto and Guglielmo Ciardi). Savvy Biennale organisers soon diversified, showcasing Gustav Klimt’s 1909 Judith II (Salome) and Marc Chagall’s Rabbi of Vitebsk (1914–22). The 1st-floor 1961 De Lisi Bequest added Kandinskys and Morandis to the modernist mix of de…
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Ca’ d’Oro
Along the Grand Canal, you can’t miss the stunning 15th-century Ca’ d’Oro, its lacy Gothic facade resplendent even without the original gold-leaf details that gave the palace its name (Golden House). The lacy Gothic arcade framing the double loggia balcony is Venice’s most irresistible photo-op, and the intricate semiprecious stone mosaicspaving the water door entry make a grander entrance than any red carpet.
Ca’ d’Oro was donated to the city by Baron Franchetti with an impressive art collection, now displayed in the upstairs Galleria Franchetti, alongside a jackpot of artwork plundered from Veneto churches during Napoleon’s Italy conquest. Napoleon had…
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Museo della Follia
Part of San Servolo’s former insane asylum has been turned into a museum. Two intriguing rooms are full of paraphernalia and explanations of the days when a stint at San Servolo rarely guaranteed a cure. In the first room, find a series of before and after photos of 19th-century inmates, many of whose chief malady was extreme poverty, with hallucinations and nonspecific symptoms resulting from bad nutrition and vitamin deficiency. In the main room, you’ll see instruments used for electroshock therapy, while in an annexe there are other ‘therapeutic’ instruments, including chains and straitjackets.
Of particular interest is the ancient pharmacy, where for centuries…
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Museo Correr
Napoleon filled his royal digs over Piazza San Marco with the riches of the doges, and took some of Venice's finest heirlooms to France as trophies. But the biggest treasure here couldn't be lifted: Jacopo Sansovino's 16th-century Libreria Nazionale Marciana, covered with larger-than-life philosophers by Veronese, Titian and Tintoretto and miniature back-flipping sea creatures.
Venice successfully reclaimed many ancient maps, statues, cameos and weapons, plus four centuries of artistic masterpieces in the Pinacoteca. Not to be missed are Paolo Veneziano's 14th-century sad-eyed saints (room 25); Lo Schiavone's Madonna with a bouncing baby Jesus, wearing a coral good-luck…
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Ca' Rezzonico
Baldassare Longhena's luminous baroque palace on the Grand Canal celebrates 18th-century decadence in lavish music salons, sumptuous boudoirs and even an attic pharmacy with medicinal scorpions. Giambattista Tiepolo's Throne Room ceiling is a masterpiece of elegant social climbing, showing gorgeous Merit ascending to the Temple of Glory clutching the Golden Book of Venetian nobles' names – including Tiepolo's patrons, the Rezzonico family.
Collection highlights include the Pietro Longhi Salon of socialite satires, Rosalba Carriera's wry society portraits, Giandomenico Tiepolo's swinging court jesters in reassembled Zianigo Villa bedroom frescoes, and Emma Ciardi's moody…
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Museo Civico di Santa Caterina
While on the right bank of the canal make for the Museo Civico di Santa Caterina . The church and its attached convent and cloisters house many of the city's art treasures. In the church itself are remarkable frescoes attributed to Gentile da Fabriano (who worked in the early 15th century). The beautiful Cappella degli Innocenti contains remarkably fresh and vivid frescoes by two contemporary artists, depicting the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
To these have been added the extraordinary fresco cycle by Tomaso da Modena (1326-79) on the life and martyrdom of St Ursula, recovered late in the 19th century from another already partly demolished church.Over two floors…
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Museo del Vetro
Murano has displayed its glass-making prowess at the Museo del Vetro since 1861. Downstairs, 3rd-century iridescent Roman glass is featured alongside Maria Grazia Rosin’s 1992 postmodern detergent jug in impeccably blown glass. Upstairs, technical explanations detail the process for making murrine, the technique used in making Venetian trade beads. The section on glass mosaics explains the mineral sources and chemical reactions that produce specific colours, and by way of example, shows miniature portraits in glass that are outsized masterworks of technique. To the left is the frescoed Salone Maggiore (Grand Salon), with displays ranging from 17th-century winged goblets…
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Palazzo Mocenigo
Costume dramas unfold in the Mocenigo family’s swanky 18th-century Grand Canal palace, now a fascinating museum showcasing the fashions of Venice’s power elite. Necklines plunge in the Red Living Room, lethal corsets come undone in the Contessa’s Bedroom and men’s paisley silk knee-breeches show some leg in the Dining Room. Yet even at the most risqué parties in the Green Living Room under Jacopo Guarana’s 1787 Allegory of Nuptial Bliss ceiling, guests had to mind their tongues: the Mocenigos reported philosopher and sometime houseguest Giordano Bruno for heresy to the Inquisition, who subsequently tortured and burnt the betrayed philosopher at the stake in…
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Casa di Goldoni
Comedians, musicians and writers looking for inspiration seek out the birthplace of Carlo Goldoni (1707–93), Venice’s greatest playwright and maestro of delicious social satire and opera buffa (comic opera). As the 1st-floor display explains (in Italian), Goldoni was a master of second and third acts: he was a doctor’s apprentice before switching to law, a backup career that proved handy when some comedies didn’t sell. But Goldoni had the last laugh, with salon sitcoms that made socialites laugh at themselves. The main draws in the museum are the 18th-century marionettes and puppet theatre, but don’t miss the chamber-music concerts held here (see the website).…
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Libreria Nazionale Marciana
Across Piazzetta San Marco from the Palazzo Ducale lies the gracious form of what Palladio described as the most sumptuous palace ever built. Designed by Jacopo Sansovino in the 16th century, the building occupies the entire west side of the piazzetta and houses the Libreria Nazionale Marciana (National Library of St Mark, aka Biblioteca di San Marco or Libreria Sansoviniana, after its architect) and the Museo Archeologico.
The library extends around the corner on the waterfront into what was once La Zecca, the Republic's mint. It is a masterpiece of the Renaissance, featuring an arcade of Doric columns on the ground level, Ionic ones above and a series of 25 statues of…
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Palazzo Barbaran
North of Corso Palladio, three Palladian beauties line Contrà Porti. The finest is the newly restored Palazzo Barbaran, built by Palladio c 1569–70 with a stately double row of columns on the facade and a delightful double-height courtyard loggia that seems to usher in the sunlight. Frothy stuccowork and Giambattista Zelotti’s frescoes of gambolling gods lift the roof right off spacious ground-floor galleries. If you use the bathroom under the stairs, take a moment to contemplate through the bathroom window Palladio’s clever use of cross-vaulting.
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Museo del Risorgimento e Dell’età Contemporanea
Since 1831, this neoclassical landmark has been a favourite of Stendhal and other pillars of Padua’s cafe society for heart-poundingly powerful coffee and caffè correto (coffee cocktails). The grand 1st floor is decorated in styles ranging from ancient Egyptian to Imperial, and during the day you can visit the Museo del Risorgimento e dell’Età Contemporanea, recounting local and national history from the fall of Venice in 1797 until the republican constitution of 1848 in original documents, images and mementos.
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Telecom Future Centre
Set up in the 15th-century cloisters of the adjacent Chiesa di San Salvador, this interactive museum of the future shows us how we might communicate decades from now - a little science-fiction fantasy in the heart of the venerable historic city. See how we will spend countless hours creating MMMail personalities, personal TV shows on the web or converting written messages in to the artificially spoken word.
If you get lucky and stumble on a seminar in the 16th-century refectory you will be able to admire the beautifully frescoed barrel-vaulted ceiling.
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Museo Diocesano d’Arte Sacra
Housed in a former Benedictine monastery dedicated to Sant’Apollonia, this museum has a fairly predictable collection of religious art and the occasional standout temporary show – but the exquisite Romanesque cloister you cross to reach the museum is a rare example of the genre in Venice, and it’s often open much longer hours than the museum. The adjoining building was a church until 1906, and now houses exhibition spaces.
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Castelvecchio Museum
Carlo Scarpa’s revived Castelvecchio makes a fitting home for Verona’s museum showcasing a diverse collection of frescoes, jewellery, medieval artefacts and paintings by Pisanello, Giovanni Bellini, Tiepolo, Carpaccio and Veronese, plus wonderful temporary shows ranging from Andrea Mantegna retrospectives to modernist glass.
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Tomba di Giulietta
Morbid romantics seek out the Tomba di Giulietta, a cloister featuring a red marble coffin long used as a drinking trough, a motley collection of 1st-century Roman amphorae and, upstairs, some frescoes of minor interest, mostly from the 16th century.
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Museo del Risorgimento e della Resistenza
The Museo del Risorgimento e della Resistenza is dedicated to Italian reunification and the Resistance in the latter stages of WWII. It's located southeast of the train station.
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