Museum sights in Venice
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Museo della Musica
Housed in the restored neoclassical Chiesa di San Maurizio, this collection of rare and often very curious instruments spans the 17th to 19th centuries and is accompanied by informative panels on the life and times of Antonio Vivaldi. To hear how these instruments sound in action, check out the kiosk with a range of early-music CDs and ticket point for Interpreti Veneziani, who fund this museum and play museum-piece instruments with modern verve around the corner at San Vidal.
reviewed
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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…
reviewed
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Museo Storico Navale
Maritime madness spans four storeys and 42 rooms at this museum of Venice’s seafaring history, featuring full-scale boats including the ducal barge, Peggy Guggenheim’s not-so-minimalist gondola, ocean liners, and WWII battleships. Your first port of call on the ground floor are sprawling galleries of fearsome weaponry – cannons, blunderbusses, swords and sabres – with hardly any noticeable bloodstains. These big guns were rarely needed in Venice, since the shallow, difficult-to-sail lagoon itself was Venice’s best protection against invaders. Check out the 17th-century diorama maps, which show the incredible span of Venetian ports and forts across the Adriatic and Mediter…
reviewed
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Museo di Torcello
Across the square from the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta in the 13th-century Palazzo del Consiglio is this museum dedicated to the island. On the ground floor are some sculptural fragments from the cathedral, a 6th-century holy-water font and a curious display of Byzantine objects from Constantinople. Upstairs, you’ll find a series of surprisingly dark religious paintings from the workshops of Veronese, and sundry ancient office supplies from Torcello’s bureaucracy, including a 7th-century lead seal that must have made paperwork downright toxic. The museum’s ancient artefacts are held in the Palazzo dell’Archivio, opposite the Palazzo del Consiglio. They inclu…
reviewed
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Fondaco dei Turchi
The dukes of Ferrara had the run of this 12th-century mansion until they were elbowed aside in 1621 to make room for Venice’s most important trading partner: Turkey. For centuries the building served as a way station and warehouse for Turkish merchants, who were a constant in Venice throughout the on-again, off-again relationship between maritime powers, celebrated with favoured-nation trading status and inter-Adriatic weddings, and marred by occasional acts of piracy, invasion and looting. The Fondaco dei Turchi remained rented out to the Turks until 1858, after which the place underwent a disastrous modernisation that left few reminders of its medieval origins. Original…
reviewed
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Ca’ Pesaro
Eclectic collections ranging from a Klimt masterpiece to samurai swords span three floors of this Baldassare Longhena– designed 1710 palazzo. When the palace was donated to the city as a showcase for new ideas in 1902, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna began with the boosterish early days of the Biennale, showcasing Venetian landscapes, Venetian painters (notably Giacomo Favretto), and Venetian socialites embodying mythological virtues. But savvy Biennale collectors soon diversified, snapping up pivotal works such as Gustav Klimt’s 1909 Judith II (Salome) and Marc Chagall’s Rabbi of Vitebsk (1914–22). The De Lisi Bequest in 1961 added Kandinskys and Morandis to the mo…
reviewed
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Museo della Follia
The San Servolo hospital has been partly opened as the Museo della Follia (Museum of Madness). Two intriguing rooms are full of paraphernalia and explanations of the days when being sent to San Servolo was hardly a guaranteed cure. In the first room is a series of before/after photos of 19th-century inmates, many of whose chief malady was extreme poverty, with hallucinations and non-specific symptoms resulting from bad nutrition and vitamin deficiency. In the main room are instruments used for electro-shock therapy, while in an annexe are other ‘therapeutic’ instruments, including chains and straitjackets. Of particular interest is the ancient pharmacy, where for ce…
reviewed
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Museo Correr
Napoleon mowed down a church on this spot to make way for a grand ballroom, but he didn’t have long to kick up his boots in his Ala Napoleonica – within a couple years of the building’s completion, the Austrians took over Venice. When Venice won its independence, it also gained these imperial digs with all the trimmings: ancient maps, Graeco-Roman statuary and splendid medieval paintings. Stride through these salons towards the Palazzo Ducale, and at the end you’ll reach Jacopo Sansovino’s spectacular 16th-century Libreria Nazionale Marciana, with representations of wisdom by Veronese and Titian. Temporary shows in the neoclassical ballroom on such themes as fut…
reviewed
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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…
reviewed
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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 v…
reviewed
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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.
reviewed
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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.
reviewed
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Museo del Merletto
Burano is traditionally famed for its lace, but at the time of writing the Museo del Merletto at Piazza Galuppi 187 remained closed for restoration, and much of the stock for sale in Buranelli boutiques was imported – be sure to ask for a guarantee of authenticity.
reviewed
