The Royal Rooms. New paths of the Correr Museum in Venice
After a long and demanding restoration work, they were opened to the public twenty o’clock sale of the Royal Palace of Venice (inside the Correr Museum) which were the original private apartments of the users of three reigning houses, Bonaparte, Habsburg, Savoy, throughout the nineteenth century and up to 1920.
This is the completion of a work begun in 2000, on a scientific project for the recovery of the Venice Civic Museums Foundation And town of Venice with support of the Supervision and with the decisive support of French Committee for l Safeguard of Venice and by patrons from all over the world, who saw the first royal rooms already the protagonist of an enhancement activity of Royal Palace.
About 15 years of demanding research and work were needed to complete the work: scholars, technicians, expert restorers, artisans, room after room, found the decorations and tapestries, replacing the original furniture and furnishings.
The interventions began in 2000 with the recovery of the large representative apartments, which already have access to part of the Correr Scalone Museum in Piazza San Marco, the Vestibule of honor, the Ballroom and the ceiling of the Throne Room.
In the second phase (2006-2012) work was carried out on Sissi’s apartments and immediately afterwards on some rooms of the apartment of Maximilian of Habsburg, Emperor of Mexico. The third restoration campaign (2013-2014) involved the (very refined) rooms and furnishings of the Emperor’s Cabinet Study, the Audience Hall, the Chamberlain’s Hall and the King Umberto Hall.
Between 2015 and ’16, the “Sublime Canova” project was created, conceived by MUVE Director Gabriella Belli to give the right emphasis to the magnificent Canovian collections of Correr: masterfully presented in three rooms, two of which are inserted in the Royal Palace, the whose restoration was supported by the French Committee for the Safeguarding of Venice and by the Venice International Foundation.
To the apartments of Maximilian and the Kings of Italy.
These are large, very elegant rooms, spread over about 850 square meters, each characterized according to the style of the Guests who lived here in certain periods. Decorations and furniture are at the height of the crowned heads that enjoyed them for more or less prolonged stays. From Napoleon, to Francesco Giuseppe and the Empress Sissi, to Maximilian of Habsburg, Emperor of Mexico, to Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy and, gradually, up to Umberto I. Italian and European history passed through these halls. At the end of the time of the kings and emperors, those halls became offices and archives at the disposal of the state and officials, which necessarily involved the removal of much of the existing decorations and furnishings.
The MUVE president Mariacristina Gribaudi recalls how “The opening of the Royal Rooms coincides with the doubling of the Correr museum area, an extraordinary return to the city that here will have evidence of political history but also of Venetian customs and arts of the nineteenth century”
A treasure of the best Venetian craftsmanship that continues the great tradition of the arts still present in the lagoon area today.