Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 19/07/2026 20:30:00

The national library of Venice, housed in Jacopo Sansovino's masterwork of Renaissance architecture on the Piazzetta San Marco facing the Doge's Palace. The building, constructed between 1537 and 1588, was described by Andrea Palladio as the most ornate and richest building since antiquity -- its two-storey arcade of Doric and Ionic orders, encrusted with sculptural decoration, establishing the classical architectural vocabulary that would define the Piazzetta for centuries. The library was founded in 1468 when Cardinal Bessarion donated his collection of Greek and Latin manuscripts to the Republic, and the core holdings include some of the most important texts to survive from the classical and Byzantine worlds. The collection today exceeds one million items including illuminated manuscripts, incunabula, maps, prints, and historical photographs of Venice. The reading rooms, with their painted ceilings by Veronese, Tintoretto, and Andrea Schiavone, rank among Italy's most beautiful library interiors. The monumental staircase and the Sala della Libreria (Great Hall) are accessible to visitors through the Museo Correr circuit, displaying rotating selections from the manuscript collection alongside the sixteenth-century ceiling paintings commissioned to celebrate the library's completion. The Fra Mauro world map, a fifteenth-century masterpiece of pre-Columbian cartography, is among the treasures periodically displayed. The library's Piazzetta location places it between the Campanile and the waterfront columns of San Marco and San Todaro, at the ceremonial entrance to Venice from the sea. The building's ground-floor arcade houses the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, displaying Greek and Roman sculpture. Access to the library's exhibition spaces is through the combined Museo Correr ticket from Piazza San Marco.