Let's go discover the Secret Venice, with an itinerary between artisans and art workshops, special places that combine taste with beauty.
Follow us in this itinerary from insider of the most precious addresses related to artistic craftsmanship and contemporary design of the lagoon city, realized in collaboration with Veneto Secrets. We will guide you in the extraordinary treasure chest of wonders Secret Venice, among the laboratories and the workshops where the materials with which are made also some of the installations exhibited at the Venice Pavilion of the Biennale, this year dedicated to Venetian craftsmanship.
Secret Venice
The heart of our journey through "art in art" is the sestiere Cannaregio, where is the Fonderia Valese, the last artistic foundry of Venice that produces, strictly by hand, the most iconic copper and brass objects of Venice such as golden horses placed on the sides of the gondolas or the romantic lamps of St Mark's Square.
Orson furnace, instead is the only artistic furnace left in Venice, famous all over the world for its precious gold leaf mosaics handcrafted that you can admire in some of the most famous monuments, from the Basilica of San Marco to the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
The manufacture contains a wonderful secret: the color library, a huge room where more than three thousand different shades of color can be made of Orson products. During the Biennale, you can admire some of their mosaic works on display at the Venice Pavilion.
In the historic atelier housed in the palace that was the home of the great painter Tiziano, Mario Berta Battiloro is the last remaining craftsman in Europe who manually transforms gold into very thin leaves used for the production of the gold card mosaic, but also in beauty and food. You can admire their precious gold leaf in the installation of the French-Lebanese artist Zad Moultaka, exposed to the Lebanon Pavilion at the Arsenal of Venice, which combines visual architecture and musical suggestions, and in that of Walter Markham exposed to Palazzo Moro.
Since 1968 Art Serigraphy Fallen specialized in a very versatile printing technique that allows you to reproduce a work of art on a wide variety of supports. In the historic atelier of Cannaregio there is a wonderful archive of more than 1000 works fruit of the collaboration of Fallani with various editions of the Biennale Art and great artists such as Emilio Vedova, Mario Schifano, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Salvatore Fiume, Renato Guttuso, Mimmo Rotella, Hans Ricter, Max Bill, Joe Tilson, Alice Aycock, Janez Bernik, Joze Ciuha, Hsiao Chin, etc.
Our itinerary in secret Venice now takes us to the Frari where is theAtelier Pietro Longhi, one of the cult addresses of Venice for historical and theatrical costumes, which is not at all official partner of the Venice Carnival. By studying original documents and paintings, the tailor artist Francesco Briggi creates by hand perfect reproductions of precious vintage clothes.
From June you can also visit (on reservation) the exhibition dedicated to their most spectacular creations on the top floor of Palazzo Nani Bernardo, overlooking the Grand Canal between Ca’ Rezzonico and Palazzo Giustinian Bernardo, introduced by the guided tour of the 16th century palace and its wonderful garden.
In Santa Croce, you can visit Textile Luigi Bevilacqua that employs original wooden frames of the 1700s to produce precious fabrics, from brocades to damasks, required in the palaces and churches of the middle world, from the White House to the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice.
Last stop of our tour Secret Venice is Murano, where is the historical manufacture Ercole Moretti, whose merit is to have revolutionized the history of the artistic pearls in glass, in 1968, in full hippy mood, the murrine as we know them today. If you are fascinated by industrial archaeology, do not miss the visit of the museum factory, where today is also home to the wonderful bijoux collection of Ercole Moretti, including the "African" jewels.
