Museo Correr

Founded by Teodoro Correr (d. 1830), this museum in the grand imperial rooms of the Ala Napoleonica holds the city’s vast historical and art collection. It runs hot and cold like any attic, and there is no pretense of chronological order.

The first rooms house books, manuscripts, prints and maps, old models of ships, navigational instruments and globes, describing the history of Venice and its relationship to the sea. The grand neoclassical ballroom, dining room, throne room and others house works from the period, including plaster models by Canova and frescoes by Giovanni Carlo Bevilacqua.

Other rooms on this side of Piazza San Marco (affording a great view of the square) are filled with Venetian memorabilia – the robes, ducal bonnets and old-maidish nightcaps of the doges; a copy of the statue of Marco Polo from the Temple of Five Hundred Genies in Canton; musical instruments; arms and armour; and a section called ‘Venetian Civilization’ with all sorts of objects from Venetian domestic life – pots and pans and other domestic artefacts, as well as games – a roulette wheel, playing cards, a draughts set, jigsaw, children’s games (a yo-yo), a bingo set, dominoes – all from the 18th century.