Murano: Live from the Island of the Glass Makers

Murano Glass is world-famous, but does the island match up to the Chandeliers?

Murano’s reputation as a centre for glassmaking dates from 1291, when the Venetian Doge, frightened that the foundries’ fires would destroy the city’s largely wooden buildings, ordered the glassmakers to move to the island. Murano glass is still synonymous with Venetian glass, so Tony and Helen Page decided to see what it was all about…

“And now we’re in Murano, home of, yes, you’re looking at it, glass. This is an interesting piece, quite large and quite effective. It’s at one end of the village, I’m not sure what it’s called, all I know is that the island is called Murano …. So, this is one end of the canal, and I’ve just walked past the other end, from Colonna.

Get the Right Vaporetto

“As you can see, there’s quite a few people around. This is facing back the other way. Later on I’ll show you around the corner where you get a long view down to the vaporetto station, Murano Colonna. There’s another station which we will be going to when we take the vaporetto for Burano.

Frankly, there’s not that much on either side of the main canal and the main street. On the fondamente are basically what you’d expect, glass galleries, various souvenir shops and a few restaurants.

“And here as promised is a shot down the main canal, which is in effect the main street of Murano. This is taken from one of the few bridges across the canal, a bit further down from where I was before. As you can see – I’ll zoom in here – you can see the main island of Venice…well I’m sorry you can’t, that is in fact the island of the cemetery. The main island of Venice is not visible from here, it’s about a few hundred metres the other side of this church.

Glass Sculptures Everywhere

Murano Glass Sculpture

“Right, as we’re not intending to eat here I’ll show you where the entrance to the next ferry is: just here. And if you look closely you can see Helen waiting with my bag for me.

“Okay, that’s the bridge where I was and when we sweep around here, we see yet another piece of glass sculpture and, of course, the inevitable tourist posing in front of it. I don’t know, it must be something about me, that just attracts them. Well, what do you think about this? I’ll just walk around and see if we can catch it from a different light angle.

A Rather Striking Lighthouse

“This is the main street to the ferry; strangely peaceable here. It’s less frantic although let’s face it there are hell of a lot of tourists. Well, apart from a rather nice restaurant at the end of this street, you’ll see in the distance a rather striking lighthouse. So I’ll make my way towards that and see what we have to see. I wonder if you can climb it.

“So I strode down towards the lighthouse and found the Giardino Italia, the Italian Garden, which not surprisingly, this being Murano, is made of glass. Nevertheless, it’s quite spectacular.”

See more photos of Murano at Travelsignposts Murano album Here.

For more information about Venice, see our Venice Trip Planner Here.

Map of Murano

Things to do in Venice

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