Connection School - Murano Cultura
www.museiciviciveneziani.it (glass museum)
www.teatrolafenice.it (teatro La Fenice)
www.teatrostabileveneto.it (teatro Goldoni)
History of Murano
Murano is an island of the Venetian lagoon renowned for its artistic glassware.
Its history and success is bound to glassware manufacturing and the name Murano itself is associated to glass almost as a synonym.
This association is the fruit of almost a millennium of history where Murano with its craftsman masters contributed to make this material from simple sand to one of the highest artistic expressions .
To see a master working while he is shaping this material with fire, remains still one of the most fascinating spectacles one can watch.
Things appear to be rising out of nothing as by magic done by fire and few simple movements.
Few movements of the hands, apparently simple but actually fruit of years and years of work and technical improvement, a teaching handed down from father to son into the furnace of the centuries .
Glass, as almost anything, was discovered casually seeing the sand exposed to the high temperature of fire become glassy.
The first to master the fusion technique were the Phoenicians and then this technique was spread along the Mediterranean coasts of the Middle East and Egypt.
Originally the vitreous paste was poured and pressed on moulds so as to get rudimentary containers useful to hold food and drink .
The Romans imported from the East this manufactures and one of their first production settlements is believed to have been located in Aquileia, ancient and important Roman harbor through which was passing the trade with the East and the European continent .
With the fall of the Western Roman Empire and with the raids of the Northern People into Italy, the population of Altinia and Aquileia, to escape the raids of these populations, took shelter on the lagoon islands and settled the first settlements of Venice at the end of the V century A.D
Recent archeological excavations in Venice seem to prove the existence of preexistent Roman settlements .
Certainly, with the barbarian invasions, the role of Aquileia as the main harbor for goods interchange that Aquileia performed up to then in the Roman era is halted and is gradually replaced by Venice .
And it is probably from Aquileia that Venice inherits the technique of glassware manufacturing and primarily inherits the role of bridgehead between West and East .
Thanks to the trade exchanges that it maintains with the East, Venice has the possibility of assimilating its culture and advanced and refined techniques of that time .
From the East, Venice doesn't only import precious goods to resell to the populations of the hinterland and that will make it a rich and powerful Maritime Republic, but learns also the most refined arts such as silk weaving, precious metal manufacturing and glass production .
The Eastern influence into the taste and technique of glass production are instrumental to the development of the Venetian glassware art .
In the Venetian glassware art, glass is a plastic matter to shape and blow while hot into the most refined forms and the most variegated colors and is definitely in contrast with other glass manufacturing that traditionally use glass as a hard, monochromatic matter to press and possibly appreciate through cutting.
This way of interpreting glass develops as time passes by a glassware school that becomes peculiar in Venice and soon reaches its artistic climax with great examples of stylistic virtuosity .
The first historical document of a glassware activity in Venice is from the year 982.
Since 1921 the glassworks that meanwhile moved to the nearby Murano for security reasons and perhaps for secrecy reasons is banned from Venice and since then Murano binds its destiny to glassware .
The glassware art almost becomes the exclusive activity of the people of Murano that hand down from father to son the art learned giving birth to actual dynasties of glassware masters some of which are still active from the Middle Ages up to now .
This makes of Murano one of the most ancient, if not the most ancient productive settlement still in activity.
A true historical and cultural heritage to protect and preserve .
Murano's glassware consists of precious artistic objects wanted by collectors all over the world that up to day maintain unaltered their glamour and their elite value.
Accomodation
Transports
www.actv.it
www.alilaguna.it
www.veneziataxi.it
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