Museo della Musica

In a deconsecrated neoclassical church on Campo San Maurizio, the Museum of Music sets historic instruments under a wide dome — Vivaldi-era strings and the craft of Italian lutherie — with a second collection of violins sounding across town at San Giacomo di Rialto.

Why it matters

Venice has been, as the museum's own site puts it, an ideal place for music since the Middle Ages, and this museum is the city's dedicated exhibition of that continuity. Its seat is the former church of San Maurizio, whose austere classical interior gives the instrument displays concert-hall acoustics and an unfussy setting. The collections belong to the Artemio Versari collection, assembled by a collector and expert in historic instruments, and centre on two exhibitions: the instruments of Antonio Vivaldi and his time, and the instruments of the collection La Grande Liuteria Italiana, the latter shown at the museum's second venue, the church of San Giacomo di Rialto. It is a rare museum where the objects on show are still performed on — the venue doubles as a concert stage.

What to notice

San Maurizio's rotunda-like plan and sober nineteenth-century neoclassicism frame the instrument cases. Baroque strings on display — with gut strings, lighter bass bars and shorter necks — differ from their modern descendants. The lutherie section sets the Venetian school's workmanship alongside other Italian centres, treating instrument-making as a Venetian art on par with painting and printing. The church's fabric includes a dome and floor tombs. The Interpreti Veneziani ensemble also performs in these spaces.

Context and history

San Maurizio served the parish that gave Campo San Maurizio its name until deconsecration, after which the building passed to cultural uses; its adaptation as a music museum joined two Venetian institutions of different kinds — a civic church fabric and a private collecting tradition around the Interpreti Veneziani concert world. The museum's identity is built on the Versari collection, which documents both the repertoire (Vivaldi and his contemporaries, the composer whose Ospedale della Pietà made the city one of Europe's great centres of violin playing) and the craft (the Italian violin-making schools). The extension of displays to San Giacomo di Rialto — by tradition Venice's oldest church, in the market district — connects the museum to the city's historic commercial heart.