VENICE’S CULTURAL HERITAGE

Why is Venice’s Cultural Heritage so relevant within a visit to the city? Venice is unique for its being built on water and for having kept its ancient urban fabric of islands and bridges mostly intact over the centuries. This means that modern road traffic has been kept out of the city. .

However, the beauty of Venice is, paradoxically, the main reason why many of its visitors fail to appreciate the city’s wealth of artistic and cultural heritage. After seeing Saint Mark’s Square, many tourists will look for a picturesque corner of the city in which to take a selfie. This way, their experience of the city will be extremely superficial. People who choose to visit Venice often ignore both the existence of its heritage sites and their importance and uniqueness, and as a consequence they limit their visit to a single day or even to just a few hours.

Analysis of data relating to the number of visits to Venetian museums, art galleries and churches reveals the surprisingly low proportion of tourists who take an interest in the city’s art and culture: of those who come to Venice each year, only 20 per cent visit the city’s museums.

A few examples…

Despite Venice’s glorious history as a maritime power and an important centre of shipbuilding, the Museo Navale (Maritime Museum) – which has vast numbers of fascinating exhibits – receives only a limited number of visitors. The Scuole (confraternities), which are living testimonies of local traditions and custodians of an inestimable historic-artistic heritage, as well as the numerous churches with masterpieces in situ, receive only a small proportion of the thousands of tourists who arrive in the city every day. .

Venice Tour Guides for Sustainable Tourism believes that an itinerary that includes a visit to a museum or gallery where you can admire spectacular works of art would not only help visitors to better understand the history of the place and its civilization, but would also be an unforgettable experience in itself.

To inform visitors of the wealth of artistic and cultural heritage Venice has to offer, Venice Guides for Sustainable Tourism has launched a campaign that will introduce Italian and foreign visitors to museums, galleries and other places of art in the city while inviting them to contribute to the protection of this immense artistic heritage.

Part of the Venice Tour Guides for Sustainable Tourism project involves offering guided tours of the city’s museums in exchange for donations for the restoration of Venetian works of art.