MUSEI CIVICI VENEZIA

Doge's Palace (St.Mark’s Square Museums)
Piazza San Marco 1, 30124 Venice

A masterpiece of Gothic architecture, the Doge’s Palace is the heart and symbol of the city of Venice, the residence of the Doge and the seat of the Venetian Magistracies. Visitors to the Museum will discover the history and culture of the Venetian civilization, from its very origins: the early doges, the fourteenth-century architecture, the renovations by Doge Foscari and the fifteenth-century Palace, the fire in 1577, the prisons and the later seventeenth-century improvements, all the way to the fall of the Venetian Republic. The interiors, superbly decorated by legions of artists, with masterpieces by Titian, Veronese, Tiepolo and Tintoretto, provide an extraordinary visitor experience.
 

Information: every day from 9.00 am to 6.00 pm (last entry 5.00 pm) from 01/11 until 31/03
                    every day from 9.00 am to 7.00 pm (last entry 6.00 pm) from 01/04 until 31/10
Tickets: Venezia Unica City Pass ADULT, JUNIOR, SENIOR, SAN MARCO / St. Mark’s Square Museums pass / Museum Pass
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Museo Correr  (St.Mark’s Square Museums)​
S. Marco 52, 30124 Venice

The museum was founded around the collection that Teodoro Correr bequeathed to the city in 1830. The design and early construction of the Napoleonic Wing, which closes off St. Mark’s Square on the side opposite the Basilica, date back to the years in which Venice was part of the Kingdom of Italy (1806-1814) ruled by Napoleon. It was built in the area previously occupied by the church of San Geminiano (an ancient church that had been reconstructee in the mid-sixteenth century by architect Jacopo Sansovino), and to each side, by the Procuratie Vecchie and the Procuratie Nuove, the two long buildings delineating St. Mark’s Square that formerly housed the offices and residences of some of the most important officials of the Venetian Republic. The architecture, decorations, frescos and Neo-classical style furniture offer significant examples of the culture and languages of this historical period. They bear witness, almost in contrast to the ancient Doge’s Palace, to the will to usher in a new era in the history of Venice, emblematically represented by this modern palace of kings and emperors.
 

Information: every day from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm (last entry 4.00 pm) from 01/11 until 31/03
                    every day from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm (last entry 5.00 pm) from 01/04 until 31/10
Tickets: Venezia Unica City Pass ADULT, JUNIOR, SENIOR, SAN MARCO /  St. Mark’s Square Museums pass / Museum Pass
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Archaeological Museum (St.Mark’s Square Museums)
S. Marco 52, 30124 Venice

The National Archaeology Museum, one of the oldest public museums in Italy and in Europe, is home to an important collection of Greek and Roman sculptures, bronze objects and sculptures, ceramics, jewellery, coins, and a collection of Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities. Its origins date back to the legacy of Domenico Grimani and a donation by Giovanni Grimani who, respectively in 1523 and in 1587, bequeathed most of their collections of antiquities to the Serenissima Republic of Venice. These collections formed the nucleus of the Statuario Pubblico, a typical expression of Renaissance taste, established in 1596 by Frederick Contarini in the Anteroom of the Library of San Marco. Enriched by further donations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Museum, with the Library, was transferred in 1812 by Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy, to the Doge’s Palace. 
The current National Archaeology Museum was created after World War I in the Royal Palace, donated by King Vittorio Emanuele III, and installed in its current location on the first floor of the Procuratie Nuove. The exhibition curated by Carlo Anti between 1923 and 1926, was expanded between 1949 and 1954 by Bruna Forlati, following the acquisition of Teodoro Correr’s archaeological collections in 1939.
The collection grew in 1961 as a result of the post-war agreement between Italy and Yugoslavia, with the acquisition of part of the collections of ceramics, glass and gems from the Museum of St. Donatus in Zadar. Finally, in 1982, Giancarlo Ligabue donated part of his collection of prehistoric bronze objects to the Museum.
 

Information: every day from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm (last entry 4.00 pm) from 01/11 until 31/03
                    every day from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm (last entry 5.00 pm) from 01/04 until 31/10
Tickets: Venezia Unica City Pass ADULT, JUNIOR, SENIOR, SAN MARCO / St. Mark’s Square Museums / Museum Pass
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You can get information by connecting to the https://izi.travel/en site and looking for the free audio guide of the National Archaeological Museum of Venice.

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Monumental Rooms of the Biblioteca Marciana (St.Mark’s Square Museums)
S. Marco 7, 30124 Venice

The library, designed by Jacopo Sansovino, was built and decorated between 1537 and 1560 on commission by the Procuratori di San Marco, to offer a worthy home to the Greek and Latin codexes donated to the Republic of Venice by Cardinal Bessarione in 1468. Today, along with the Zecca, the former Mint that now houses the reading rooms, it is the monumental seat and part of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, which preserves precious manuscripts such as the sixteenth-century Breviario Grimani and Fra Mauro’s Map of the world, as well as antique books, including those of Aldo Manuzio.
On the first floor is the Vestibule, with the ceiling decorated by Titian’s painting of La Sapienza, and the Library, with a vaulted ceiling that constitutes a veritable “manifesto” of Venetian Mannerist painting, consisting of 21 tondi painted by seven artists selected for the occasion including Titian and Sansovino himself. The most famous are the three tondi by Paolo Veronese. The walls are decorated by canvases portraying the Philosophers, some of which were painted by Titian and Veronese.
 

Information: every day from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm (last entry 4.00 pm) from 01/11 until 31/03
                    every day from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm (last entry 5.00 pm) from 01/04 until 31/10
Tickets: Venezia Unica City Pass ADULT, JUNIOR, SENIOR, SAN MARCO / St. Mark’s Square Museums pass / Museum Pass
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Cà Rezzonico - 18th century Venice Museum
Dorsoduro 3136, 30123 Venice

This magnificent palace, now the Museum of 18th-Century Venice, was designed by the greatest architect of the Venetian Baroque era, Baldassare Longhena, for the aristocratic Bon family. Construction began in 1649. Longhena’s death in 1682, practically concurrent with that of his noble client, and the Bon family’s financial setbacks brought construction to a halt, leaving the palace incomplete.  In the meantime, the Rezzonico family, native to the Lombardy region, moved to Venice and purchased a title in 1687. Giambattista Rezzonico, a merchant and banker, bought the palace in 1751 and appointed Giorgio Massari, one of the most highly esteemed and eclectic artists of the day, to complete the palace. Work proceeded rapidly and construction was completed in 1756. The building was fully finished by 1758 when Giambattista Rezzonico’s younger brother Carlo, Bishop of Padua, was elected Pope under the name of Clement XIII: this moment represented the peak of the family’s fortunes and the palace at San Barnaba celebrated the event in grand style. But by 1810 the family had become extinct. This was the beginning of a long, troubled period for the palace as its great heritage of art and history was dismembered and dispersed. Stripped of its furnishings, which were divided among the heirs and then sold, the palace passed through the hands of various owners in the 19th century; purchased by the English painter Robert Barrett (“Pen”) Browning, it was used as a residence by his father, the poet Robert Browning, who died there. It was subsequently bought by Count Lionello Hirschell de Minerbi, a member of the Italian Parliament, who, after long and complex negotiations, sold it to the City Council of Venice in 1935.
 

Information: Information: from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm (last entry 4.00 pm) from 01/11 until 31/03
                                        from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm (last entry 5.00 pm) from 01/04 until 31/10
Close: Tuesdays
Tickets: Venezia Unica City Pass ADULT, JUNIOR  SENIOR / Museum Pass
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Palazzo Mocenigo
Santa Croce 1992, 30135 Venice

The famous map of Venice by Jacopo de’ Barbari (1500), documents the building which appeared at the time as a square plan around a central courtyard. The palace was expanded over time on the adjacent properties purchased by Nicolò’s descendants and renovated. Its current appearance probably dates back to the beginning of the 17th century, but no documents exist to corroborate the time of construction or the name of the architect. The two façades, the one overlooking the canal and the street-side façade on the “salizada”, are practically identical.  In 1945, Palazzo Mocenigo in San Stae, complete with its archive and part of the furnishings, were bequeathed in his will by Alvise Nicolò, the last descendant of the noble Venetian family, to the City of Venice to be used “as an Art Gallery, to complement the Correr Museum”. In the late 1970s, upon the death of his wife Constanza Faà di Bruno, the Civic Museums of Venice acquired the rooms on the first piano nobile, decorated with frescoes and mostly eighteenth-century furniture. In 1985, following significant restoration work, the Mocenigo apartment was opened to the public as a museum.
Completely renewed and expanded at the end of 2013, the itinerary winds its way through twenty rooms on the first piano nobile, thereby doubling the initial amount of exhibition space opened in 1985. As a whole, the rooms skilfully evoke various aspects of the life and activities of the Venetian nobility between the 17th and 18th centuries, and is populated by mannequins wearing precious period garments and accessories drawn from the collections of the Study Centre for the History of Textiles and Costume. Fashion and costumes, with a special focus on the history of the city, have always been at the centre of the research and exhibitions at the Museum, within the aristocratic setting of Palazzo Mocenigo. You can visit a section dedicated to a particular aspect of the history of Venetian costume: the scent. In the five rooms devoted to perfume, multimedia and sensory experiences are alternated in an unprecedented process of information, emotion, deepening.
 

Information: from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm (last entry 4.00 pm) from 01/11 until 31/03
                    from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm (last entry 5.00 pm) from 01/04 until 31/10
Closed: On Monday, 1st May
Tickets: Venezia Unica City Pass ADULT, JUNIOR SENIOR / Museum Pass
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Carlo Goldoni's House
San Polo 2794, 30125 Venice

The “Casa di Carlo Goldoni” (Carlo Goldoni's House) – was built in the 15th century and has maintained all the features of Venetian Gothic architecture of that period. Particularly interesting aspects of the building are the tripartite façade overlooking the canal, with its richly-decorated four-arched Gothic window, the entrance from Calle dei Nomboli onto the courtyard with the evocative two-flight outdoor staircase with a banister made of small Istrean stone columns. Initially owned by the Rizzo family, the palazzo was rented to the Centanni family and became the centre of a flourishing artistic/literary Accademia in the 16th century. Towards the end of the 17th century, Carlo Alessandro Goldoni – the playwright’s paternal grandfather and a notary from Modena – took up residence here. Carlo Goldoni himself was born here in 1707 (on February 25^th), and the palace would remain the family home until 1719. In 1914 Aldo Ravà, a noted scholar of 18th century Venice – together with Count Piero Foscari and Commendatore Antonio Pellegrini – bought the palazzo from its owner, Contessa Ida Manassero Camozzo, with the idea of using it to house a museum dedicated, in the name of the great playwright, to the history of Italian theatre. The project came to a halt with the outbreak of war, and then in 1931 Ca’ Centanni was donated to the City Council to be restored. With a slight variation on the original scheme – it was turned into the Goldoni museum and a research centre for matters relating to theatre. Again, war held up the work, which was not completed until 1953. The building opened to the public in June of that year, housing a small museum of Goldoni memorabilia and artefacts relating to Venetian theatre, though it focused primarily on its role as a research centre, with constant additions to its library and archive.
 

Information: from 10.00 am to 4.00 pm (last entry 3.30 pm) from 01/11 until 31/03
                    from 10.00 am to 4.00 pm (last entry 3.30 pm) from 01/04 until 31/10
Closed: on Wednesday, 1st May
Tickets: Venezia Unica City Pass ADULT, JUNIOR SENIOR / Museum Pass
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