Murano, Burano, Torcello: A Day in the Venice Lagoon Islands

The lagoon that surrounds Venice is not empty. It contains, distributed across its flat silver expanse, a constellation of islands that are as various in character as they are close in distance — some inhabited, some abandoned, some converted to hospitals or prisons or gardens, and three that are essential to any genuine understanding of what the Venetian world actually is. Murano, Burano, and Torcello are not day trip destinations in the conventional sense — not the kind of excursion that exists to fill a free afternoon. They are three completely different answers to the question of what a place built on water in a lagoon at the edge of the Adriatic can become over a thousand years.

A day in the lagoon islands is the best day trip available from any city in Europe. Not because the islands are more beautiful than the mainland alternatives — though Burano on a clear morning comes close to being the most photogenic place in Italy — but because the combination of the three islands, taken in the right order and at the right pace, produces an understanding of the Venetian world that the city itself, with its tourist infrastructure and its crowds, cannot provide. The lagoon is where Venice came from. The islands are what Venice was before it became what it is. A day spent among them is a day spent in the city's memory.

Take the vaporetto. Pack a lunch or plan to eat on Burano. Leave early.

Murano: Where Glass Has Been Made Since 1291

Murano is the closest of the three islands to Venice — twenty minutes by vaporetto from Fondamente Nove — and the most industrial. The Venetian Republic moved its glassblowing furnaces to Murano in 1291, ostensibly for fire safety reasons but also, it is suspected, to control the glassblowers who had developed techniques of such commercial value that the Republic considered them state secrets. The glassblowers of Murano were given extraordinary privileges — they could wear swords, their daughters could marry into Venetian nobility, their sons were considered citizens — in exchange for never leaving the island. For several centuries, Murano glass was the finest in the world and its manufacture one of Venice's most jealously guarded industries.

The industry still operates, and the demonstrations of glassblowing that are offered to visitors throughout the island are genuine rather than theatrical — the techniques being demonstrated are the same techniques that have been used on this island for seven hundred years. Watch a maestro work at the furnace for ten minutes and you will understand why the Venetian Republic considered these people worth protecting. The skill is extraordinary and the material — molten glass pulled and blown into improbable shapes at temperatures that make the workshop air shimmer — is one of the most dramatic manufacturing processes visible anywhere.

The Museo del Vetro — the Glass Museum — on the main canal of Murano contains the finest collection of Venetian glass in the world, from Roman pieces through the medieval and Renaissance periods to the extraordinary modern work being produced on the island today. It is worth two hours of serious attention and is almost always less crowded than its quality warrants.

Eat at Busa alla Torre on the Campo Santo Stefano — a reliable trattoria that serves the lagoon fish that Murano's position gives it access to — and leave by early afternoon to reach Burano before the light changes.

Burano: Colour, Lace, and the Most Photogenic Island in Italy

Burano is forty minutes from Venice by vaporetto and belongs to a completely different visual register from anything on the mainland. The island's houses are painted in colours of extraordinary intensity — cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, vermillion, turquoise, coral — that were originally used by fishermen to identify their homes from the lagoon in fog. The practical origin of the colour system does not diminish its effect: Burano on a clear morning, with the colours reflected in the canal that runs along the main street and the fishing boats moored at their doors, is one of the most beautiful places in Italy and produces photographs that require no skill to make extraordinary.

The colour is the most famous thing about Burano but not the most interesting. The lace is more interesting. Burano lace — punto in aria, the technique developed on the island in the sixteenth century — was the finest needle lace in Europe for two centuries and dressed the collars and cuffs of every court in Christendom. The industry declined, was revived, declined again, and now exists in the form of a small number of elderly women who still practice the technique and a museum — the Museo del Merletto — that documents its history with unexpected depth. Watch one of the lacemakers work if you have the opportunity: the needle moving through the pattern at a speed that seems incompatible with the delicacy of the result is one of the most impressive demonstrations of craft skill available anywhere in the Veneto.

Eat lunch on Burano rather than waiting for Torcello — the restaurants along the main canal serve fresh lagoon fish at prices significantly lower than Venice, and the setting is extraordinary. Trattoria al Gatto Nero has been the island's finest restaurant for decades and is worth booking in advance.

Torcello: The Island That Was Venice Before Venice Existed

Torcello is the last island and the most important. It requires an effort of imagination to understand it correctly, because what you see on arrival — a flat, reedy island with a cluster of buildings visible above the vegetation and a population of perhaps twenty people — does not prepare you for what it was. Torcello was the first significant settlement in the Venetian lagoon, inhabited from the fifth century when the mainland population fled the Lombard invasions and found safety in the shallow water. At its peak in the tenth century, Torcello had a population of twenty thousand and was the commercial and ecclesiastical centre of the lagoon. Venice, at that point, was the newcomer.

The decline of Torcello was caused by malaria — the channels silted up, the water became stagnant, the population moved to Venice, and the island returned to the silence from which it had briefly emerged. What remains is a cathedral — the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta, built in the seventh century and containing the finest Byzantine mosaics in the Veneto — and the adjacent church of Santa Fosca, a perfect Romanesque structure surrounded by a portico, and the stone chair in the open space between them that is called the Throne of Attila though Attila never came here.

The mosaics in the basilica are extraordinary and almost entirely unknown compared to their quality. The Last Judgement on the west wall, covering the entire interior facade, is one of the great works of Byzantine art in Italy — a vision of hell and paradise of terrifying specificity and extraordinary colour that has been here, largely unchanged, for nine hundred years. Stand in front of it for ten minutes without your phone. This is why you came to Torcello.

The island has one restaurant — the Locanda Cipriani, which has been operating since 1934 and where Hemingway wrote parts of Across the River and Into the Trees. It is expensive and worth it for the setting — lunch on the terrace of the Cipriani on Torcello in the afternoon, with the lagoon visible through the reeds and the sound of absolute silence, is one of the finest meals available in the Veneto.

How to Plan the Day

7:30am — Take the vaporetto Line 4.1 from Fondamente Nove to Murano. Arrive before the tour groups.

7:30 — 12:00 — Murano. Watch a glassblowing demonstration, visit the Museo del Vetro, walk the main canal. Lunch at Busa alla Torre.

1:00pm — Vaporetto from Murano to Burano (Line 12). Journey approximately 35 minutes.

1:30 — 4:00pm — Burano. Walk the coloured streets, visit the Museo del Merletto, photograph everything. Coffee at one of the canal-side bars.

4:00pm — Vaporetto from Burano to Torcello (5 minutes).

4:00 — 6:00pm — Torcello. Visit the basilica and its mosaics. Walk to the Throne of Attila. Sit in the silence.

6:30pm — Return vaporetto to Venice (Line 12 to Fondamente Nove). The journey back across the lagoon at dusk, with Venice appearing on the horizon as the light fails, is the best arrival the city offers.

The lagoon islands are not an excursion from Venice. They are the beginning of the explanation — the context without which the city itself cannot be fully understood.

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