Walled cities
The art of glass beads
There is a Venice made of industrious silence, expert hands and small lit fires. A town with artisan workshops where, for centuries, tiny treasures have been handcrafted in the form of glass beads. Not simple objects, but fragments of a history that has been recognised as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2020. The result of a joint effort between Italy and France, this recognition protects not only the techniques – from "light" processing to the threading of the beads – but also the language, collective memory and identity of a community that for centuries has transformed glass into sheer beauty.
Visiting Venice also allows you to see authentic artworks up close, observing the craftsmen at work, being fascinated by a world made of transparencies and colours, and taking away a fragment of it – in the form of jewellery, an emotion or a memory.
Tocatì - Shared Programme for the Safeguarding of Traditional Games and Sports
Games bring us together: the first Italian inscription in the UNESCO Register of Good Practices
Tocatì is the protagonist of transnational recognition in the UNESCO Register of Good Practices for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage, shared with Belgium, France, Croatia and Cyprus. Thanks to the commitment of volunteers of the Ancient Games Association, this Shared Programme is today a virtuous example of safeguarding traditional games heritage and a participatory cultural model: over the years it has been able to create an international network of communities, institutions and territories engaged in the research and transmission of games-related practices.
At the heart of this recognition is the International Festival of Street Games, a regular fixture that, since 2003, in the second weekend of September, transforms the streets and squares of the historic centre of Verona into a space open to sharing and discovery. Traditional Games and Sports from all over Italy, concerts and folk dances, workshops for children and conferences for older visitors, wine and gaming experiences and film screenings welcome every year the games communities of a guest of honour, a country or a region of the world, which bring their own authentic traditions to this Scaliger city: from Brittany to China, from Mexico to Flanders, from Catalonia to Hungary, which will be the guest of honour for the next edition?
Padua’s fourteenth-century fresco cycles
With the proclamation on Saturday, 24 July, 2021 in Fuzhou, China, the serial site "The frescoed cycles of the 14th century" was declared a World Heritage Site, bringing the number of Venetian sites awarded UNESCO recognition to 9.
It is a complex of eight monuments in the historic centre of Padua, inside which frescoed cycles by Giotto, Guariento, Giusto de' Menabuoi, Altichiero da Zevio, Jacopo Avanzi and Jacopo da Verona are preserved.
Unique places that recount the story of the "painted" Padua of the fourteenth century:
- Scrovegni Chapel
- Church of the Saints Philip and James agli Eremitani
- Palazzo della Ragione
- Cathedral Baptistery
- Chapel of the Carrarese Palace
- Basilica and the Convent of the Saint
- Oratory of Saint George
- Oratory of Saint Michael
VISIT THE WEBSITE OF PADOVA URBS PICTA
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Venetian defences between the 16th and 17th centuries ‘a land-based state – a sea-based state’
In 2017, UNESCO officially gave this set of assets World Heritage status; the Venetian defences cross several countries between Italy, Croatia and Montenegro, and, in the Veneto region, they included the town of Peschiera del Garda, which acted as a pentagon-shaped fortress.
The Venetian Republic took control of this town in 1440 and immediately recognised its strategic importance from both a military and commercial point of view. During the sixteenth century, armies of engineers and architects therefore worked to consolidate its defence system. The walls, which are still splendidly preserved to this day, were equipped with ramparts and bastions, designed by Guidobaldo della Rovere and built by Michele Sanmicheli.
UNESCO’s recognition confirms the exceptional value of the modern military culture (rampart system) that was developed by the Republic of Venice between the 16th and 17th centuries. The land-based fortifications protected the Serenissima from attacks by other European powers arriving from the north-west, while the defences of the Stato da Mar protected the sea routes and ports of the Adriatic Sea all the way to the Levante. This transnational defence system stretched for more than 1,000 km, between Lombardy and the eastern Adriatic coast.
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