Museum of Murano Glass

The palace began as a patrician residence in the typical forms of flamboyant Gothic , of which traces remain in the column with capital and in the windows of the facade of the courtyard. In 1689 the bishop of Torcello , Marco Giustinian , moved its headquarters here and then buys the palace and gave it to the diocese. It is then radically renovated by architect Antonio Gaspari . During those years, the first noble floor, the ceiling remains the central hall frescoed by Francesco Zugno (1709-1787), with quadrature (architectural motifs) of Francesco Zanchi (1734-1772), depicting the Triumph of San Lorenzo Giustiniani , ancestor family and first patriarch of Venice. The palace remains the seat of the Diocese of Torcello until it was suppressed in 1805 ; then passes to the Patriarch of Venice , who sells it in 1840 to the City of Murano , where he became the headquarters. In 1861 the first nucleus of the archive-museum island located space here, in the central hall, extending then, little by little, throughout the building. In 1923 Murano joins the City of Venice, which then also acquires the palace and the museum.

MUSEUM AND COLLECTIONS The Glass Museum was founded in 1861 on the initiative of Antonio Colleoni , then mayor of Murano and ' Abbot Vincenzo Zanetti , lover of glass art, with the idea to establish an archive of testimonies about the history and life of the island, which, since the fall of the Venetian Republic (1797), he has experienced a long period of crisis, which is starting to recover. Soon the archive takes over the museum , thanks to numerous donations of antique and contemporary glass from the furnaces of Murano, in the second half of the nineteenth century have started to work intensively. In support of their activities, the Abbot Zanetti in 1862 attaches to the museum is also a school where glassmakers study design and in the past there preserved glass. After the Murano annexation to the City of Venice in 1923, the museum becomes part of the heritage of the city, the collections are reordered in 1932 by Giulio Lorenzetti and Nino Barbantini and enriched with glasses of other Venetian civic collections. The museum acquires so precious Renaissance pieces and later, thanks to the Archaeological Superintendence deposits, including an important collection of ancient glass from excavations . Purchases and donations continue over time to increase the collections, also of contemporary works.