dOn Sunday, 19 October 2025, starting at 11:00 a.m., several musicians will perform in San Michele as part of a day dedicated to music, which will take place in all urban vineyards belonging to the U.V.A. (Urban Vineyards Association).
At the same time, a workshop will be set up to build rudimentary and fun musical instruments.
From Saturday 10 to Sunday 12 October, the City of Venice is organising ‘Saor’, the Venetian food festival, which aims to showcase the city’s gastronomic culture.
As in previous years, ‘Laguna nel bicchiere’ will also be participating with various events.
On Wednesday 17 September, we visited St George’s Anglican Church. Mr Philip Gwynne Jones told us about the history of the church and the Anglican community in Venice.
It is the only Anglican church in Venice and is an important landmark for its community and for many tourists. It is located in Campo San Vio and was converted from a warehouse belonging to the “Compagnia del Vetro e del Mosaico” (Glass and Mosaic Company) based on a design by engineer Luigi Marangoni. It was inaugurated in 1926.
The entrance is a simple bronze portal with a semicircular Istrian stone canopy surmounted by a statue of the saint and a bas-relief depicting St. George slaying the dragon. The bronze side panels are dedicated to the memory of British soldiers who fell in Italy during the First World War. The interior is very bright with beautiful polychrome stained glass windows.
One of the most important traditions is the feast of St. George, celebrated on 23 April, which brings together worshippers and visitors to honour the patron saint. Since 2017, the Venice Music Project has been holding concerts in this church.
The visit ended, as is traditional, with a “cicheto” and a “goto de vin” at the “Al Squero” tavern.
Visit to the Church of St. George of the Greeks and the Icon Museum
On Tuesday, 27 May, a guided tour of the Church of St. George of the Greeks and the Icon Museum was organised.
Our guide gave us a detailed explanation of the reasons for the arrival of the Greeks (or rather Byzantines) in Venice. As early as the 10th and 11th centuries, Byzantine craftsmen were invited to Venice to contribute their expertise to the construction and embellishment of the city, and following agreements between the Byzantine emperor and the Republic, privileges were granted to Venetian merchants.
As a result, numerous Greeks arrived in the Serenissima: artisans, merchants, intellectuals, and stradioti, or troops in the service of Venice. Between the 12th and 14th centuries, the arrival of Greeks in Venice intensified further and, starting with the fall of Constantinople (1453), it became the destination of choice for many scholars who spread and promoted the rediscovery of classical antiquity and the teaching of ancient Greek.
Despite the presence of a large community, they were not allowed the freedom to practise the Orthodox faith, which was opposed by the Catholic Church. Recognising the religious dogma of Rome as that of the state, the Venetian authorities were obliged to take certain repressive measures, but at the same time they exercised a certain clemency so as not to antagonise a community that contributed significantly to the economic and civil progress of the Republic.
In 1498, authorisation was granted for the foundation of a “Confraternity of Orthodox Greeks or Greek Nation” (School of St. Nicholas of the Greek Nation) in accordance with the common law of the time. In 1511, through the mediation of the stradioti, the Greek Nation was finally granted permission to purchase land to build a church with a bell tower, dedicated to St. George. A brief from Pope Leo X confirmed his consent to the construction.
Work on the current church began in 1536 and was completed in 1577, with the costs being borne by the Brotherhood. Our guide illustrated many other interesting aspects of the life and presence of the Greek community in Venice, right up to the present day.
Inside the church, a number of restorers were busy compiling an inventory of the relics preserved there. We then visited the Icon Museum, where we were able to follow their stylistic evolution from 1400 to 1700.
The visit ended with a very pleasant lunch at the Osteria Mascareta, owned by our members Gigi and Giorgia, washed down with glasses of Laguna wine.
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March, 14-16 2025
Art in the Vineyard – Group Exhibition
Cloister of Sant’Elena, Venice
From 14 to 16 March 2025, in the cloister of the church of Sant’Elena, Venice, there will be a collective exhibition of the works participating in the painting and photography competition held on 27 October 2024 on the island of San Michele.
Opening: Friday 14 March, 5.30pm-7pm
Opening hours 15 and 16 March: 10.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. / 3.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.
On Sunday 27 October, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., an impromptu painting and photography event will take place in the vineyard on the island of San Michele: ‘Art in the vineyard’, an initiative that aims to raise awareness of one of the most evocative and secret places in the lagoon through the works of artists.
On Sunday 30 June 2024, the Laguna nel bicchiere headquarters in San Michele hosted the ‘TRANSISTOR VENEZIA’ meeting.
TRANSISTORS are local hubs designed to accelerate a fair and equitable ecological transition in cities, one that is inclusive of everyone, and to put power back in the hands of communities.
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May, 28 2024
read-making course
Island of San Michele
On Tuesday 28 May 2024, our member Jutta held a bread-making course in San Michele.
Participants had the opportunity to see how she prepares her delicious rye bread, which is very popular during Laguna nel bicchiere’s social events.
“Venice: from the first Lazzaretto
to pandemic control 1423-2023”
Veneto Regional Council, Palazzo Ferro Fini
Guided tour by Professor Nelli Elena Vanzan Marchini, curator of the exhibition.
The exhibition was an opportunity to learn about the health policy of the Republic of Venice.
The first part tells the story of the lazarettos: in 1423, the Republic of Venice designated one of the islands in the lagoon as a hospital dedicated to plague victims, who were hospitalised and isolated there, the Lazzaretto Vecchio.
In 1468, the Lazzaretto Nuovo was established to serve as a quarantine site for people, goods and ships.
The policy of the lazarettos was intended to contain the spread of infection without blocking commercial traffic. Ensuring a compromise between strict health measures and the continuation of trade was, in fact, a matter of vital importance.
The second part of the exhibition displays previously unseen items: identification documents that the Republic used to identify sick people and suspend trade relations with their territories of origin.
From 1630 onwards, the plague no longer entered Venice, even though it continued to rage in European states and Mediterranean ports. While medicine was groping in the dark, Venetian politics used mercantile pragmatism to monitor epidemic outbreaks, including through diplomatic channels and spies, to prevent access to the contagion by isolating both infected and suspected goods and people.
Everything that entered and circulated within the domains had to be accompanied by Fedi di Sanità, or health certificates, the ancestors of modern green passes, travel documents that allowed the origin and destination of goods and people to be traced.
The Republic of Venice thus equipped itself, in the long term, with a health system aimed at reducing the risks of epidemics. The last part of the exhibition is dedicated to images of the lazarettos as they were and as they are today.
Guided tour by our member and scientific advisor for this project, Piero Falchetta.
The exhibition is dedicated to Nicolò Manucci, an illustrious 17th-century traveller, born in Venice in 1638 and died in Pondicherry around 1720.
In a brief introduction, Falchetta explained what the exhibition offers visitors: an illustration of Nicolò’s life and works, accompanied by objects that recreate the atmosphere of the places where he lived. In the video in the first room, an actor in oriental dress outlines Nicolò’s journey from Venice in 1653 to the Mughal Empire.
Nicolò, the son of an apothecary, stowed away on a tartan bound for Smyrna and entered the service of an English nobleman, Henry Bard, Viscount Bellomont, who was on his way to Isfahan on a diplomatic mission on behalf of King Charles II Stuart of England. After a first stop in Smyrna, the journey continued overland to Isfahan, where Lord Bellomont sought an audience with the emperor, but the negotiations to obtain help for the king were unsuccessful. They then continued their journey to Surat, the largest port in the East Indies.
Henry Bard died shortly after arriving in India in 1656, leaving Nicolò alone and forced to invent various trades in order to survive. He arrived in Delhi and presented himself at the court of the eldest son of the Mughal emperor, Prince Dārā Shikōh, who offered him a position in the army as an artilleryman. Involved in the dynastic struggles for the succession to the emperor and after many adventures and wars, Manucci moved to Lahore around 1670 and began practising medicine.
He later devoted himself to trade, but after accumulating a modest fortune, he lost everything when the ship in which his capital was invested was shipwrecked. He was then forced to return to Delhi, where he was hired as a physician at the Mughal court. Around 1683-8, he moved to Goa, abandoned the idea of returning to Europe and, on the advice of friends, married an English widow.
He led a quiet life, continuing to practise medicine. It was here that Manucci conceived his memoirs, dictated to a number of amanuenses, most of whom spoke Portuguese. After the death of his wife in 1706, Manucci moved to Pondicherry, where he died in a place called Monte Grande around 1720.
The history of the memoirs and their arrival in Europe is very complex and intricate and has been the subject of study by numerous specialists.
It is explained very well by Piero Falchetta in the video that introduces the rooms displaying the manuscripts of the work, as well as the first printed editions. Viewing Nicolò Manucci’s entire legacy, including through digital media, is the heart of this exhibition and its greatest attraction.
This has been made possible thanks to the collaboration between the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin and the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice.
The miniatures that make up the manuscripts known as the Red Book and the Black Book describe: the main characters of Mughal history and court life and their customs and traditions in the former; the social, civil and religious life of the Hindus, completely different from that of the Mughal Islam, in the second.
These illustrations still amaze and enchant us with their bright colours, unusual shapes and wonderful rendering of faces and expressions. The exhibition is accompanied by carpets, weapons, paintings and art objects from different periods, evocative of the places where Manucci spent his adventurous life.
On Saturday, 22 April 2023, at the Church of S. Francesco della Vigna, Maestro Paolo Bernardo, violin teacher at the Bolzano Conservatory and the first and only Italian violinist at the Odessa Higher School of Violin, performed Bach sonatas for solo violin.
The violinist dedicated this concert to Laguna nel bicchiere because the previous year, the Association had presented the wine ‘Radiosa aurora’ from the Polesana farm on the day dedicated to fathers (See May, 7 2202).
Radiosa aurora was the nom de guerre of Mario, Paolo Bernardo’s father, who was a partisan.
The concert programme was as follows:
Sonata I in G minor, BWV 1001
Adagio; Fugue, Allegro; Siciliana; Presto
Partita I in B minor, BWV 1002
Allemanda-Double; Corrente-Double; Sarabanda-Double; Tempo di Borea-Double
Partita II in D minor, BWV 1004
Allemanda; Corrente; Sarabanda; Giga; Ciaccona.
“La corte delle impiraresse” (The Court of the Bead Makers)
Museum, workshop and shop owned by Luisa Conventi
Cannaregio n.100, Venice
On Friday, 24 February, members of Laguna nel bicchiere visited the museum “La corte delle impiraresse” (The Court of the Bead Makers), curated by owner Luisa Conventi.
Luisa expertly and enthusiastically illustrated all the laborious stages involved in creating pearls cut from glass paste cylinders, known as conterie.
We were able to see the various sizes and types of tiny pearls typical of the work of the impiraresse and discover their evocative names: balottini, incamisà, papagà, macà, tosca… At the request of those present, Luisa also touched on the techniques for making rosette and lampwork beads.
A history of the conterie factories in Murano and a detailed illustration of the work and social demands of the impiraresse completed the visit from a chronological point of view. Returning to the present day, we admired original necklaces and ornaments created for the various Feste delle impiraresse (Bead Makers’ Festivals) that have been organised since 2009.
Finally, a short video gave us an insight into the manual skills required for the work, which in the case of glass fringes also involves the use of a loom.
A rich overview of a craft that has almost disappeared and is kept alive by a few passionate artisans.
A Romagnolo in Veneto.
Le Ciàcole de Bepi by Olindo Guerrini from Ravenna to Venice
Monumental Rooms of the Marciana National Library
Guided tour by Dr Elisabetta Sciarra with readings by our member Maurizio Vittoria, who edited the transcription and Italian translation of Ciàcole.
The guided tour was an opportunity to discover the author Olindo Guerrini, a versatile intellectual, poet and writer in various dialects with an extraordinary goliardic vein.
The Ciàcole de Bepi are satirical poems in the Venetian dialect in which Bepi is Pope Pius X, portrayed in a light-hearted and pungent manner as a sort of naive country priest intent on chatting about the things of his time.
The visit continued in the museum section of the Ridotti dei Procuratori di San Marco, where recently restored cartographic works are on display: Jacopo de’ Barbari’s view of Venice, Hajji Ahmaed’s heart-shaped globe, presented alongside its wooden matrices, the Chinese globe by the Flemish Ferdinand Verbiest and Fra’ Mauro’s globe.
The visit ended on the first floor of the Mint, where the ancient coffers of the Republic are preserved, made of fossilised wood covered with iron studs.
Alta tensione abitativa (High housing tension), a non-profit association focused on revitalising residential living in Venice, organised a ‘popular dinner’ on Monday 29 August 2022 at Fish market in Rialto, one of the places ‘now crushed by the city’s intense touristification’, to support the national bill drafted by the association.
During the evening, some previously unseen scenes from the film Welcome in Venice were screened, introduced by director Andrea Segre.
On Friday, August,26 2022, Laguna nel bicchiere took part in the ‘Disnar per la Storica’ initiative organised by the Remiere and other city associations.
The aim of the event is to invite residents to ‘return in large numbers to the Grand Canal to watch the Historical Regatta from the boats’.
To this end, free tables are set up in various locations around the lagoon city.
This year, we shared our food and wine with our friends from the “Sette Mari” rowing club at their headquarters in Rio Terà Barba Frutariol (Cannaregio).
Presentation of Radiosa Aurora wine with a tribute to Mario Bernardo, the partisan “Radiosa Aurora”,
screenwriter and cinematographer.
Radiosa Aurora (Burning Daylight) is the title of a novel by Jack London published in 1902. It was chosen as a nom de guerre by Mario Bernardo, partisan commander of the Garibaldi Brigade “Antonio Gramsci” operating in the Feltrino Bellunese area.
After the war, Bernardo worked in cinema, both as a screenwriter and director of photography for some of the most significant works in Italian cinema, and as a teacher of filming techniques.
Claudio Polesana, owner of the Terre di Gaia farm, dedicated the organic wine ‘Radiosa Aurora’ to the partisan, which Laguna nel bicchiere presented on 7 May 2022 at its headquarters on the island of S. Michele.
On this occasion, Marco Borghi, President of the Municipality of Venice Islands, scholar of the history of the Resistance and member of the Scientific Committee of IVESER, provided a portrait of the partisan during the war, while Carlo Montanaro, curator of the archive of the same name containing film material and former lecturer in Theory and Technique of Cinematic Language, spoke about the man of cinema.
Bernardo’s son Paolo, violinist and professor of violin at the Bolzano Conservatory, also participated in the presentation. Mario Bernardo passed away on 10 February 2019, a few days before his 100th birthday.
The video of the meeting is available on our video page; due to its length, it has been divided into four parts.
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April, 22-23 2022
Visit to San Francesco della Vigna
Guided tour of the church, convent complex, library and vineyard of San Francesco della Vigna.
The tour began with an introduction to the church by Renzo De Antonia on the 22nd and Marica Michieli on the 23rd.
Friar Rino Sgarbossa then led us with lightness and enthusiasm on a discovery of the monastic library, originally intended for scholars but now open to all.
He illustrated its history, growth, development and future prospects. An educational exhibition, set up in an internal room, traces the history of the birth of the book: from manuscript to printed book. Bookbinding tools and examples of movable type complete the visit.
There is no shortage of modern technology, such as the digitisation of nautical, geographical and portolan works. We then entered the room of manuscripts and ancient works, where ancient and precious illuminated choir books are beautifully displayed and where, among other things, part of the volumes that once made up the library of San Michele in Isola are preserved.
Finally, we marvelled at the vineyard-garden, now tended by a private company, where herbs and flowers together give off a delicious scent of honey and offer a beautiful view to our curious gaze.
We concluded with a tasting of Laguna wines and the hope of soon returning to this magical and secluded place.
Venice, Doge’s Palace.
Guided tour by Donatella Gibbin.
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2021
October, 16 and 24 2022
“The World on a Plate” – Saint Michael
To highlight the cosmopolitan character of the Laguna nel bicchiere Association, which, it should be noted, has wine production as its defining feature, a fundamental element of Italian and Mediterranean culture, we wanted to invite our foreign members (“foresti” in Venetian) to offer delicacies from their national cuisines for us all to enjoy together.
The island of San Michele, where the Laguna nel Bicchiere winery is located, was home to a monastery of the Benedictine Camaldolese order from 1212 to 1817.
The cartographer Fra Mauro lived and worked here in the first half of the 15th century. Very little is known about him: not even the exact date of his death, which occurred before October 1459. His most famous work is the renowned globe, considered the pinnacle of medieval cartography, which has been preserved in the Marciana National Library since 1924. A 1:1 scale reproduction of the globe is on display in the winery. Fra Mauro’s fame is now recognised internationally, so much so that a crater and the adjacent plateau on the visible side of the Moon have been named after him.
Our member Piero Falchetta has produced several essays on the Camaldolese cartographer, making him one of the foremost experts on the globe. He wanted to donate one of these popular essays, ‘A Brief History of Fra Mauro’s Globe’, to Laguna nel bicchiere, thus recognising the work carried out by our cultural association to preserve historical sites.
The publication, promoted by Laguna nel bicchiere, is available in San Michele and will also be available during our travelling initiatives.
“Far Fae”
Exhibition by our member Luc François Granier 2–12 October – Claudia Corò Art Studio
Venice, Giudecca 673.
Opening hours vary, visits by appointment, tel: 3405183068 Opening on the occasion of Art Night Venice 2021, Saturday 2 October from 5pm to 8pm.
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“Ceci n’est pas une bibliothèque”
Photographic exhibition by member Marica Michieli, September, 3-24 2022
Multimedial Laboratory Art Conservation
Venice Cannaregio 2589 – Fondamenta della Misericordia
A unique record of the conservation work carried out at the Marciana National Library in 2006, photographed as the work progressed.
2020
Fishing in the Lagoon. The Ninni-Marella historical model collection, Candiani Cultural Centre, Mestre, guided tour by Michele Campos.
‘Bacalà’ presentation of the book by Anna Alberati, with 4 watercolours by Luc François Granier, 12 February.
Church of Sant’Elena and vineyard attached to the old convent, 25 June, guided tour by parish priest Don Narciso Belfiore.
The Last Days of Byzantium. Splendour and Decline of an Empire, Marciana National Library, Monumental Rooms, guided tour by Susy Marcon.
Leonardo Da Vinci. The model man of the world. Accademia Galleries, Venice.
Jewish Museum with kosher food tasting, 6 June, guided tour by Michela Zanon.
Supermarket, with Simone Carraro, Luigi Divari, David Horvitz, Matteo Stocco, We are Venice & Barena Bianca. Serra dei Giardini, Venice, guided tour by Luigi Divari.
Fra’ Mauro’s Globe, San Michele, November, 10, curated by Piero Falchetta.
‘Your body is my house‘, exhibition by Andrea Tagliapietra, Cantina Grande di Venissa, 18 December.
2018
Library of San Francesco della Vigna, guided tour by Father Rino Sgarbossa.
Postcards from Neverland. Exhibition of watercolours by Flavio Franceschet, Kokonton Gallery, Venice, April–May.
Marciana National Library, Mint, Library of San Marco, guided tour by Cristina Pagan.
Vincenzo Coronelli (1650–1718) . The image of the world, Marciana National Library, Monumental Rooms, guided tour by Orsola Braides.
Printing R-evolution 1450-1500, Correr Museum, guided tour by Sabrina Minuzzi.
2017
“Vite notturne” (Night Lives). Exhibition by photographer Enzo Isaia, La Salizada Gallery, Venice.
2016
See you at Via Garibaldi III. Photography exhibition by Pierandrea Gagliardi and Atsuko Suehiro, Kokonton Gallery, Venice.
2015
Water and food in Venice. Stories of the lagoon and the city. Doge’s Palace, Venice.
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