Narra of a “place” suspended between water and land that over the centuries has changed, transformed by natural phenomena and human action. A path that, starting from the findings that attest to the intense trade exchanges involving the lagoon and its inhabitants already in the Mycenaean era (2nd millennium BC), winds through Venetian, pre-Roman and Roman, Byzantine and early medieval testimonies and crosses the glorious times of the Serenissima to reach the 19th century.
The Archaeological Section collects artifacts from findings in the lagoon area and the Altinate countryside accompanied by works that have arrived at the Museum from private collections, such as the collection of Egyptian bronze and ceramic statuettes, covering a chronological span from the Paleolithic to late Roman times. The collection of Greek, Italic, and Etruscan ceramics from the 7th to the 4th century BC is large and presents various decorative types and production techniques.
The Roman ceramics consist of a small but significant core: kitchen and tableware for funerary use, glasses and cups, various types of lamps. Of cult and funerary use are the protohistoric bronzes with human and animal figures of Etruscan, Italic, and Paleovenetian production, which are paired with personal and ornamental objects such as fibulae and mirrors. Of Roman age, instead, are the small bronze sacred figures from domestic lararia and table objects and tools, as well as figurative slabs and antefixes from sanctuaries in central and southern Italy.
Small Greek sculptures arrived in Torcello through Venetian collecting. Roman copies and reworkings of Greek originals, funerary monuments and portraits from the Altinate area, area urns and cippi complete the sculptural collection of the archaeological section.
The Medieval and Modern Section exhibits works and documents dated from the 6th century to the 19th century. Stone materials and architectural fragments testify to the deep cultural and artistic ties with the Byzantine empire, both with the presence of works produced in the East, such as the splendid holy water font of the 6th century or the collection of encolpia, medals and bronze fibulae, and with the persistence and reuse of Byzantine decorative models in locally produced objects. From the basilica of Torcello came to the museum fragments of wall decoration of splendid craftsmanship and the 13th-century gilded silver Altarpiece, a rare surviving example, although incomplete, of an ecclesiastical furnishing widespread in the lagoon area.
Wooden sculptures from the lagoon area, Byzantine icons and panel paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries with sacred subjects find their best examples in the polychrome and gilded bas-relief depicting a “Pietà” and in the panel with the Christ in Passion showing evident Tuscan influences. From Torcello, since disappeared with its demolished churches, memory remains in the Annunciation, in the Adoration of the Magi, in the Monochromes with stories of the Virgin and in the stories of Saint Christina from the Veronese workshop, coming from the Church of S. Antonio in Torcello.
Of the social and productive life of Torcello and the neighboring submerged islands, echoes remain in fragments of everyday pottery, in coins, glass, cooking tripods, and manufacturing scraps, memory of workshops and active kilns.
