In order to spend an enchanting holiday in Venice you can also  decide to turn your attention to the ancient Venetian houses (house renters, residences and B&B) which have kept their charm intact, or the ones which have undergone a modern restoration nonetheless the traditional atmosphere has remained integral. In our section dedicated to B&B Locations you will have a wide range of them at your disposal. Many are the Venetians who have opened the doors of their houses to all those who love things with a story: to the lovers of walls which have seen and heard so much, and to people who love finding a mark of authenticity even in a modest room. You  can happen to have a stay in a house embellished with the traditional floors ‘alla veneziana’  and the typical sealed glass windows, created by the glass- blowers from Murano, and at the same time you can have all the most modern services at your disposal.

Ca’ San Giorgio, for instance, is a marvellous gothic residence of the past used as a convent, which has been restored taking care of details and the refinement of timeless residences. You will also have the opportunity to choose an exclusive room located on the highest floor with original visible beams. The peculiarity of the room is given by the typical wooden Venetian balcony from which you can enjoy a spectacular view over the roofs of Venice.

Charming and traditional is also Casa Martini Inn, which has belonged to the Martini family since 1700, thanks to Cipriano Moro Martini, namely a shrew spice trader between Venice and the East. The furnishings of the rooms reflect the historical distribution of the roles inside the Venetian palaces. The owners used to live on the noble floor (the most prestigious one, corresponding to the second floor): the rooms are richly furnished in the Venetian style. On the upper floor (the attic on the highest floor) there was the domestic service staff. The furnishings are more modest but the relevant restoration has displayed the beautiful roof structure with its tiles  again.

Not to talk about Casa Formosa Inn, located in an ancient aristocratic house of a lovely neo-gothic making, situated along the Canal beside the lively Campo of Santa Maria Formosa, that is a popular area which is extremely near St. Mark’s Square.        TD

Look at all Town House Suites

2 July, 9 pm. The innocent gaze at the environment. The series begins with Edwin Porter’s classic silent film The Great Train Robbery (1903, 11 min), the first film in the history of cinema to utilize a rudimentary form of montage.

9 July, 9 pm. An impossible desire for idyllic nostalgia. Terrence Mallick’s Days of Heaven (1978, 94 min), a retrospective look at the young America of the 1910s, sees Hollywood cinema confronting the classic dichotomy of city life and country life.

16 July, 9 pm. (Rain) people on the move. With the film The Rain People (1969, 101 min), the young Francis Ford Coppola confronts the rapport between the individual and environment in flux, typical of many on the road genre films.

23 July, 9 pm. Terror on the post-atomic horizon. For this fourth “environment” an atypical film noir was chosen, one of the last of the genre of these American classics: Kiss Me Deadly (1955, 106 min) by Robert Aldrich.

The 11th Architecture Biennale is curated by Aaron Betsky and organised by La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta and it will take place in Venice (Giardini and Arsenale) from September 14th to November 23rd.
With the inclusion of Frank Gehry and Matthew Ritchie among the 21 Installations at the Arsenale Corderie, and with the addition of 15 new firms to within the section Experimental Architecture (reaching now 55 firms exhibiting) at Padiglione Italia in the Giardini, the list of participants to the 11th International Architecture Exhibition – Out There: Architecture Beyond Building has been completed.
Frank Gehry and Matthew Ritchie are the two new and prestigious presence among the Installations at Corderie dell’Arsenale, large site-specific installations questioning how can we feel “at home” in the world. The Installations will be accompanied by Manifestos focusing on an “architecture beyond building”, while Hall of Fragments by David Rockwell together with Casey Jones + Reed Kroloff will open the Corderie dell’Arsenale.
Another piece of news, the section Experimental Architecture – the survey on experimentation at Padiglione Italia, curated with the collaboration of Emiliano Gandolfi and showing architects from all over the world- is enriched by 15 more firms reaching 55 participants. This recognition will be held together by small monographic exhibition of Masters of the Experiment who based their work on experimental architecture: Frank Gehry, Herzog & de Meuron, Morphosis, Zaha Hadid and Coop Himmelb(l)au.
On the second floor at Padiglione Italia, Upload City – in collaboration with Saskia van Stein – will present videos from You Tube and similar sources showing experimental architecture produced by (and for) the next generation.
Within Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, the Arsenale Artiglierie will host Uneternal City. Trent’anni da “Roma interrotta”, twelve projectual visions on Rome and its suburbs by Centola Associati, Delogu Associati, Giammetta & Giammetta, Labics, n!studio, Nemesi, t-studio, BIG (Denmark), Clark Stevens-New West Land (Usa), Koning Eizenberg Architecture (Usa), MAD (China), West 8 (The Netherlands).
The Artiglierie will also host the works of the 10 winners and the 40 honourable mentions of online competition for university students Everyville 2008. Community beyond Place, Civic Sense beyond Architecture. The competition is curated by Aaron Betsky with the collaboration of Francesco Delogu. Everyville 2008 is an initiative made possible by the collaboration between the Biennale di Venezia and Gruppo Telecom Italia, which makes available on the www.everyville.labiennale.org website the most innovative technology for the realisation of the contest and for the display of the winning projects. Software powered by newitalianblood.com. In collaboration with domus.

On 8^th June the usual summer initiative was started by Aperol, namely the partner of Intrapresae Guggenheim Collection, which for a long time has accompanied and freshened the Sundays of the people visiting the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

From 8^th June to 21^st September, all Sunday mornings, Piero Ballarin, a creative Venetian barman, will offer the well-known ‘spritz’ to those who will decide to spend a part of their day among Picasso’s, Kandinsky’s Pollock’s, Chagall’s, Magritte’s and De Chirico’s masterpieces.

People will have the opportunity to visit the temporary exhibition Coming of Age. American Art from 1850 to 1950 which will be held by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection from 28^th June to 12^th October. Winding inside the renewed venues of the Venetian museum, this exhibition, with more than seventy works of art among which paintings and sculptures, will display a century of American art, which, between 1850 and 1950, went from a realistic representation of details to an abstract interpretation of universal ideals.

Tania Danieli

The exhibition Mimmo Paladino at Villa Pisani is set in the magnificent Villa and in the garden, which will be a sort of prestigious stage for the sculptures and paintings of the Italian artist, along a magnificent tour showing the most charming corners of Villa Pisani, from Tiepolo’s room, to the Stables, from the Orangery to the Coffee House and to the wonderful Maze of hedges, one of the few still preserved in Europe.
The artist planned a tour with more than seventy masterpieces, from the well-known “Dormienti ai Sette Scudi”, from the tower in terra cotta, to the statues exhibited at the MART (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) in Rovereto, besides those expressly developed for this exhibition. He is the author of the famous salt mountain in Plebiscito Square in Naples, of the mosaic for Ara Pacis in Rome and of the permanent installation at the Hortus Conclusus in Benevento, where his works combine in a harmonic contraposition with fragments of Roman columns, capitals and broken gables. In his thirty-year career Paladino developed a timeless sign language, able to have a profound contact with the heritage of the past. Horses in essential stark lines, human shapes waiting, details suggesting cultures and environments of the most ancient and profound Italic civilization, form the lexicon of his works used by the artist to enhance the mysterious and charming atmosphere of the baroque garden of Villa Pisani.

FareVetro is the first exhibition organised at the Museum as the result of this partnership. Coordinated by Silvio Fuso and open to the public from 29 May to 30 September 2008, the show brings together more than one hundred examples of the art of the glass-maker. Either created specially for the event or drawn from the ‘historical’ collections of the eleven companies concerned, these are a spectacular demonstration of how techniques and design have developed within full respect of the very specific language of glass. All produced on Murano, the exhibits illustrate the skill of the master craftsmen, showing how technical and aesthetic experimentation can go together. Some the fruit of collaboration with modern artists and designers, others a return to traditional forms, each piece reflects changing tastes and the variety of production within the island’s various factories.
The exhibition will be held in the various spaces of the museum: the garden, the monumental entrance hall and the piano nobile. In this latter space, the support of the Association has made it possible to reorganise the display layout in a single room (the work of Daniela Ferretti). This is a first step towards the complete refurbishment of the Museum in the future.