Palazzo Mocenigo

Palazzo Mocenigo is a Venetian patrician palace turned museum of textiles, costume, and perfume -- one of the very few places in Venice where you can walk through richly furnished 18th-century noble rooms exactly as they were lived in, rather than as a gallery of paintings on bare walls.

The 18th-century textiles here are among the most fragile objects on public display anywhere in Venice. Flash photography is prohibited and the rule is not a formality -- light is the specific agent that destroys dyed silk, and once it has gone it does not come back.

Do not touch the fabrics or sit on the furniture. The rooms are dressed to look lived-in rather than roped off into a gallery, which makes them unusually easy to treat casually and unusually easy to damage.

Entry is through the Fondazione Musei Civici, and a ticket here supports a much less visited institution than the same money spent at the Doge's Palace. Santa Croce sees very little visitor spending, and this museum is one of the few places to direct any of it.

The perfume section works partly by smell, with samples to try. It is genuinely worth doing, and worth doing sparingly -- the room is small and heavy fragrance lingers for the people who come in after.

Palazzo Mocenigo sits in Santa Croce, a short walk from the San Stae vaporetto stop and the Rialto area. It's part of the Venice Civic Museums network, with an admission fee covering entry, and typically draws far smaller crowds than the Doge's Palace or the Accademia.