Murano Site Features

Murano reads as a smaller, plainer Venice. It shares the same canal-and-bridge structure and the same building types -- palazzi with water gates, a campo with a well head, brick churches -- but built for artisans and merchants rather than patricians, so the scale is lower and the ornament sparser.

Santi Maria e Donato is the exception and the island's most important building. Its 12th-century apse, seen from the canal behind, is the finest Veneto-Byzantine exterior in the lagoon: two tiers of arcading in brick and Greek marble, with dogtooth brickwork and coloured stone inlay, designed to be read from the water. Inside, Greek marble columns carry Veneto-Byzantine capitals beneath a gilded image of St Donatus, one of the earliest surviving examples of Venetian painting on a gold ground.

The Palazzo Giustinian, built in the 17th century as the bishop's residence and now the glass museum, is the island's one grand secular facade, with the rest of the canal frontage given over to workshops -- long low sheds behind modest fronts, their furnace chimneys the most distinctive feature of Murano's skyline.

The Museo del Vetro

The collection runs from Roman glass through the Renaissance techniques that made Murano's reputation -- cristallo, the near-colourless glass perfected here in the 15th century; millefiori, canes fused and sliced to produce repeating floral patterns; lattimo, opaque white glass imitating porcelain -- to 20th-century studio work.

Working furnaces

Several workshops run live demonstrations, in which a gather of molten glass is worked into a form in a few minutes. These are genuine production furnaces rather than exhibits, and the smaller ones are usually the more interesting to watch.

Telling real from imported

A great deal of glass sold across Venice as "Murano glass" is imported and has no connection to the island. The Vetro Artistico Murano trademark, administered by the region, is applied only to glass actually made here, and buying at a workshop where the furnace is visible is the surer test.

Murano is made up of seven small islands connected by bridges, arranged around a network of canals that mirrors central Venice's own layout on a smaller scale. The Canale Grande di Murano, its widest waterway, runs through the center of the island and is lined with the glassblowing workshops the island is known for.