Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

The famous map of Venice by Jacopo de’ Barbari (1500), documents the building which appeared at the time as a square plan around a central courtyard. The palace was expanded over time on the adjacent properties purchased by Nicolò’s descendants and renovated. Its current appearance probably dates back to the beginning of the 17th century, but no documents exist to corroborate the time of construction or the name of the architect. The two façades, the one overlooking the canal and the street-side façade on the “salizada”, are practically identical.  In 1945, Palazzo Mocenigo in San Stae, complete with its archive and part of the furnishings, were bequeathed in his will by Alvise Nicolò, the last descendant of the noble Venetian family, to the City of Venice to be used “as an Art Gallery, to complement the Correr Museum”. In the late 1970s, upon the death of his wife Constanza Faà di Bruno, the Civic Museums of Venice acquired the rooms on the first piano nobile, decorated with frescoes and mostly eighteenth-century furniture. In 1985, following significant restoration work, the Mocenigo apartment was opened to the public as a museum.
Completely renewed and expanded at the end of 2013, the itinerary winds its way through twenty rooms on the first piano nobile, thereby doubling the initial amount of exhibition space opened in 1985. As a whole, the rooms skilfully evoke various aspects of the life and activities of the Venetian nobility between the 17th and 18th centuries, and is populated by mannequins wearing precious period garments and accessories drawn from the collections of the Study Centre for the History of Textiles and Costume. Fashion and costumes, with a special focus on the history of the city, have always been at the centre of the research and exhibitions at the Museum, within the aristocratic setting of Palazzo Mocenigo. You can visit a section dedicated to a particular aspect of the history of Venetian costume: the scent. In the five rooms devoted to perfume, multimedia and sensory experiences are alternated in an unprecedented process of information, emotion, deepening.