Creative Venice: artisan excellence and craftsmen workshops


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From $133.26

3 reviews   (4.33)

Price varies by group size

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Pricing Info: Per Person

Duration: 3 hours

Departs: Venice, Venice

Ticket Type: Mobile or paper ticket accepted

Free cancellation

Up to 24 hours in advance.

Learn more

Overview

Shop through botteghe and tiny shops and find artisanal souvenir and objects 100% made in Italy, listening to the story of these businesses often started by family members who transmitted their knowledge to others with passion and love for their work. Venice, in addition to being a city of art, has always been a city of artisan excellence and creative talent. For more than 1,000 years the hands of masterful Venetian craftsmen have been creating precious and refined objects: mosaics, glassware, fabrics, jewellery and perfumes. Even today, Venice is brimming with ancient know-how that cannot be found elsewhere in the world. Innovative boutiques and concept stores are flanked by artisan studios, where masterpieces in glassware, pearl, gold, paper, and leather are created; there are even ateliers of historic masks and costumes, artistic kilns, antique tailoring and weaving workshops, woodworking shops and printing studios, graphic design studios where unique products can be found.


What's Included

Tour Leader & Nature and Interpretive Guide

What's Not Included

gratuities


Traveler Information

  • YOUTH: Age: 0 - 15
  • ADULT: Age: 16 - 99

Additional Info

  • Guides required to regularly wash hands
  • Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
  • Service animals allowed
  • Guides required to regularly wash hands
  • Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
  • Service animals allowed

Cancellation Policy

For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.

  • For a full refund, you must cancel at least 24 hours before the experience’s start time.
  • If you cancel less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time, the amount you paid will not be refunded.

What To Expect

We will start our tour in the very center of Venice, in front of a church, traditionally considered to be the oldest in town.

15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free

Mercato del Pesce al Minuto
The market place in Venice is Rialto: its fish market is noisy, raw, authentic and full of true venetian life. Fish is artfully arranged on stalls covered with deep layers of crushed ice, seagulls wander among the fishmongers calling out today's catch, local people purposefully browse the stalls scattered in the two halls of the "Pescheria", as generations of venetians have been doing so in the last 800 years!

15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free

San Polo
We will visit a local artisan who creates traditional rural products, using typical materials and manufacturing techniques which nowadays have been lost in the industrial production. These products are linked to values and traditions such as spending time with family and friends around the table, preparing and celebrating food, drink and events at home. These ceramics are made in Italy with bright colours, lively patterns and quality materials; hand crafted in a time honoured fashion to create a rustic, warm, refined, elegant and yet informal atmosphere.

15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free

Ponte di Rialto
The next stop will be in a traditional shoe shop. The necessity and ability to exploit everything available, born from the deep bond between man and nature, blended with the wise and already advanced culture of recycling, which today speaks to a world which is under fire from huge ecological issues. The old bicycle tyres were used as waterproof and hardwearing soles; the canvases of jute sacks, from the transport of seeds and grains, were transformed into excellent linings; the fabrics, even rags from old clothes, were transformed into the uppers. Thus necessity became a virtue. These shoes are made in the true manner, there are now new generations of shoe-slippers, like the "Veneziane", inspired by the eighteenth-century splendour of the Serenissima republic, embellished with velvet or bright oriental silks, all guaranteed hand-sewn. All of this exploiting a craftsmanship which is handed down over generations, and which is already looking to the future.

15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free

Campo Santo Stefano
we will meet a "maestro marmorizzatore", a master papermaker. Maestro means in Italian an expert, also a teacher, but it is also a word Venetians use in their dialect when greeting an elderly person in a respectful way (buon giorno maestro!). This maestro is specialized in ancient paper techniques which lives again in this production in Venice. This magic city, suspended between sky and water, cross-road of different cultures, northern gateway of the Orient, has been the inspired muse of this shop.
The water of the Lagoon takes on, during the different times of the day, shades of colors, that only these technique are able to reproduce. Some of these remarkable works are fascinating sheets of paper with the theme of flowers (tulips, roses and trees).
Absolutely original is the series of fish that smile: captured in the liquid element, they are petrified on paper as if they were fossils embedded in primordial seas.

15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free

Chiesa di San Salvador
In the heart of Venice, between Rialto Bridge and St. Marco square, in their precious and cozy atelier, since 2007 a couple of artists encourage with their creations the intimate relationship between the object and the viewer.
We will admire rare collections of original sculptures and jewelry, a world made of delicate glass flowers, dreamlike shapes of cut iron, reborn trees from wood, nomadic landscapes, and sights from the abyss.

15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free






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