Greetings all!
Today we’re going to visit the Museo Correr, which is sort of like that old joke about 5 raccoons in a trenchcoat trying to order at a restaurant. It’s a bunch of different museums and collections all rolled into one, and it really does stretch from about 5000BC to the 1800s.
Part of the reason for the weirdness is that it really has 3 museums intertwined. The Correr, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Venezia. Still, the Correr itself holds a big section on Venetian history, the Correr family’s art collection, and a Neo-Classical wing that Napoleon claimed when he controlled Venice.
It’s another of those things I didn’t know about when I went to Venice in the first place that I’m glad I discovered, so here are a couple hundred pics of cool stuff.
That’s an impressive entryway at the top. Then we see a beauty admiring a beauty. Side note: Please don’t tell my wife I typed that. I’m dead if she finds out. 😃
Cool plaque in the middle, and next to it is a neat collection of shells.
The ones in pink, as well as the one in blue, were examples of statuary in front of screens to add mood. Unfortunately, the ones in the red room didn’t really come out.
In the middle and bottom left are some amazing bookcases I’d be okay with if they happened to be in my house.
Also, cool portraits of doges, which starts a section on the history of Venice.
That’s an amazing boat model.
Note the Doge hat top middle, and then we get to a really cool map section.
That weird blocky looking thing in top right is this impressive sea chest.
Basically, this is a whole nautical themed area, which I found really interesting.
More cool stuff about Venetian history.
More boat stuff! I really enjoyed this section of the museum.
Those last two are models of the Venetian Arsenal, which I didn’t get to see on this trip but will do if we can ever go back again.
Pictures of major naval victories.
Still more on this topic.
And now we get into something interesting, a room dedicated to Francisco Morosini.
Pictures of him and items he had, like his greatcoat.
By the way, some foreshadowing. We’ll see Morosini’s name again down the road.
Ding! Topic change!
We skip back thousands of years from Morosini in the next stretch of the museum to Greek and Roman stuff as we pass into the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Venezia.
Etruscan too, if I remember the pottery in top middle correctly. That’s Athena in bottom right, who’s always been my favorite of the Greek pantheon.
Now we’re into the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, which again had maps! And amazing Renaissance / Early Modern ceilings.
But that room with the ceilings is kind of odd. It’s got metal shelves running down the middle with books, but nothing terribly extraordinary. It’s almost like a used book store.
That red image was a strange art display, which was jarringly modern in the context of the museum.
Top middle is the will of Marco Polo. Then in middle and bottom right we get one of the most exciting moments of the trip. Okay, I’m a nerd, if this is exciting, but then, I think you knew that.
Oh, that exciting thing? Well, it’s the Fra Mauro Mappa Mundi. This is actually one of the most famous medieval maps around and it’s one I’ve looked in in pictures and reproductions many times. In fact, we’d see a neat show on it in the Galileo museum in Florence a few days after being here.
So, to walk around a corner and see it live was something! It’s like 8ft x 8ft, so it’s kind of epic in its own right.
Anyway, we have to go back to get to the rest of the museum, so we pass through that room with modern red art. That middle photo is the floor, which was kinda neat in the context. Then we go through the cool room with the odd used bookstore shelves and there it is.
I can’t get away from it!
It’s chasing me through the whole world!
It’s… It’s the Chicago Manual of Style! The horrors!
Anyway, we move back into the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Venezia to their coin collection section. Some of those coins date back to Caesar and even earlier. Pretty cool, I thought.
Then back into the Correr and more Venetian history.
Note the heraldry in top left, then the fun Farmacia sign in the middle, and finally take a look at those shoes in middle right. Yes, though are shoes. The wife has a much shorter pair something like that.
Gotta love conspicuous consumption combined with fashion, right?
More just cool stuff from around the city.
I loved this table in bottom right. My picture doesn’t do it justice.
Now we move into the Neo-Classical wing occupied by Napoleon. Loved the cool flags, though I suspect Italians aren’t too fond of the middle left one.
There was an amazing dining room starting with the middle photo.
And finally, we reach a grand hall with gorgeous ceiling and floor.
That’s the Correr (and associated) Museum. It’s well worth visiting, but I will say doing it and the Palazzo Ducale in one day, though they’re close to each other, is exhausting!
Tomorrow, we’ll get to the last set of photos from around the Piazza San Marco with St. Mark’s itself.