Neighborhood Spotlight: Murano

When I began spending half the week on Murano in August 2021, I could barely understand what anyone said. I spoke Italian fluently, but everyone else spoke Venetian, including local inflections and vocabulary I eventually came to comprehend.

My connection to the island began through my relationship with a man who is now my ex. We joined his apartment with the one his mother owned, creating a massive sequence of lofted rooms inside a former factory that had produced refractory materials for glass furnaces. But I had an entire life beyond the relationship. I developed the Venice branch of my tour company, got a boat, shopped at the fruit-and-vegetable vendor on Calle dal Mistro, and belonged to an illegal gym, a phrase that captures the atmosphere so efficiently that I see no reason to elaborate.

I also built an incredible kitchen, with equipment made by Steel Cucine in Carpi and a Veneta Cucine island topped with Carrara marble. After the breakup, I recreated it at Parla Cucina in Rome. I should probably unpack these choices with my therapist.

Murano was often difficult and sometimes lonely, but my life there was neither casual nor entirely defined by another person. It was my home, and much of what I had built there was mine. Come along and I'll show you what curiosity, hunger, and persistence turned up.

Murano sits north of Venice, directly across the lagoon from Cannaregio. Although everyone calls it an island, it is composed of seven islands divided by canals and connected by bridges.

There are seven vaporetto stops, and choosing the right one will save a longer walk than you intended. Colonna serves Fondamenta dei Vetrai, where workshops and glass businesses line the canal. Museo is convenient for the Glass Museum and the Duomo. Navagero, where I lived, is quieter and more residential. Faro has the lighthouse, connections deeper into the northern lagoon, and a very good tramezzino.

How often do you get the chance to eat a nearly forgotten Venetian delicacy roasted in a glass furnace? For centuries, Murano’s glassmakers roasted lagoon eels seasoned with bay leaves using the residual heat of their furnaces. This tradition, known as bisato su l'ara, has all but disappeared, but we’re reviving it especially for our visit to the historic NasonMoretti glassworks, where we’ll enjoy an eel-themed aperitivo.

Murano is an essential stop on my Venice, Uncharted culinary trip, running December 6–12, with just a few spaces left, starting at $9,000. It’s a rare opportunity to experience the intertwined culinary and glassmaking traditions of the lagoon in a way few visitors ever do.

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Glassmaking in Venice did not begin in 1291. The earliest documented reference to a Venetian glassmaker dates to 982. The famous decree came three centuries later, when the Venetian government ordered furnaces moved away from the city center to reduce the risk of fire. Glassworks were already active on Murano, but the measure concentrated the industry there.

Venetian glass developed through sustained contact with the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. Techniques, raw materials, and decorative ideas arrived from the eastern Mediterranean, particularly Syria. During the fifteenth century, Angelo Barovier perfected cristallo, an exceptionally transparent glass that helped establish Murano as Europe’s leading producer of luxury wares. Enameling flourished, while filigree, diamond-point engraving, and ever more elaborate blown forms expanded the repertoire.

The fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797 precipitated a long crisis. Artistic production declined sharply during the first half of the nineteenth century, then recovered as glassmakers revived Renaissance techniques and founded new companies. Fratelli Toso was founded in 1854, Antonio Salviati established his businesses soon afterward, and the Museo del Vetro was founded in 1861.

Murano reached another creative peak during the twentieth century, when glass companies began working systematically with artists, architects, and designers. Vittorio Zecchin became artistic director of Cappellin Venini & C. in 1921, while Carlo Scarpa served as Venini's artistic director from 1932 to 1947. In the postwar years, figures such as Fulvio Bianconi, Flavio Poli, and Archimede Seguso experimented with sommerso, abstract murrine, sculptural masses, and exceptionally light blown vessels. Their work belongs to the history of modern design, despite the best efforts of every souvenir shop slinging mass-produced, imported glass dolphins to suggest otherwise.

The Museo del Vetro provides the necessary historical overview. Its chronologically arranged collection moves from ancient glass through the Renaissance and into the major design experiments of the twentieth century.

For contemporary work, Alessandro Boscolo makes colorful lampworked jewelry and objects that are playful without becoming novelty glass. Cesare Toffolo applies filigree, incalmo, gold-leaf decoration, and other techniques to astonishingly precise lampworked sculptures and miniatures.

​NasonMoretti, founded in 1923, is my choice for table glass. Its tumblers, goblets, and carafes are restrained in form and exceptional in color. The company’s museum and production spaces can be visited by reservation, and showroom appointments are also available.

For Venetian mirrors, visit AAV Barbini, where the cutting, engraving, silvering, and assembly still take place on Murano. I also love Panizzi, founded in 1960 and known for cut and engraved glass ranging from mirrors and centerpieces to more playful contemporary pieces.

The Duomo, aka Basilica dei Santi Maria e Donato, is one of the finest Veneto-Byzantine churches in the lagoon. Founded in the early Middle Ages and largely rebuilt during the twelfth century, it is worth visiting for its mosaics alone.

The floor, dated to 1141, combines colored marble and glass tesserae in geometric patterns populated by peacocks, griffins, eagles, and other creatures. In the apse, the Virgin stands alone, her hands raised in prayer, against the vast gold ground of a monumental glass mosaic. The effect is both austere and spectacular, and the church is generally far less crowded than buildings in Venice containing work of comparable importance.

On Fondamenta Manin, AcquaStanca is run by Giovanna Arcangeli and Caterina Nason. It is the only restaurant on Murano that I consider truly outstanding and remains one of my favorite places in the lagoon. I featured it in my CBS Saturday Morning segment about Venice, although I hardly needed a professional reason to keep going back.

The tagliolini with scampi and radicchio are submerged in cream and gratinated until the surface browns. It is a deeply unreasonable dish, and I love it. They also serve an iceberg and spider crab salad with lime, including little wedges with the peel. It sounds like something prepared for an aspirational dinner party in 1987. I mean that in the best possible way. It's perfect.

Across the canal, Ai Cacciatori serves good sandwiches to glassworkers stopping during lunch or after their shifts. The atmosphere comes from decades of habitual use rather than a decorator’s interpretation of a Venetian bar. Have a sandwich, an ombra, and another ombra.

Near the Museo, Valmarana and Ai Piantaleoni are solid choices if you stick to the fritti. Both have canal-side tables, which naturally means everyone else wants them too. Murano Gelateria is nearby for a couple of scoops.

At Faro, Bar Al Faro, also known as Da Robertino, occupies the sort of location that generally guarantees mediocre food for a captive audience. Think again. The tramezzini are excellent. Buy one before boarding the vaporetto, or miss the boat and eat another.

For an aperitivo with a view, the NH Collection Venezia Murano Villa has a terrace overlooking the lagoon. The hotel occupies the former De Majo glassworks near Navagero and retains elements of the industrial complex.

Most visitors leave Murano before the furnaces close. By early evening, the demonstrations are over, the workers have moved to the bars, and residents have the island back. That is the Murano I knew and the one worth staying to see.

If you want to eat your way through the city with me, you can explore more of my guides here:

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Katie