The island of Murano is most known for its storied traditional glass blowing industry. Its easy though to get it confused with its sister island close by called Burano which is known for its lace. So how do remember which is which? For me I remember Murano is for Molten Glass, and Burano is for Bras (lacy ones that is)!
Where are we on our road trip through Northern Italy?
Milan ➔ Como ➔ Sirmione ➔ Verona ➔ Venice ➔ MURANO ➔ Burano ➔ Modena/Hombre ➔ Vernazza ➔ Pisa ➔ Florence ➔ San Gimignano ➔ Volterra ➔ Siena ➔ Assisi ➔ Civita di Bagnoregio ➔ Orvieto ➔ Mostri Park ➔ Sorrento ➔ Pompeii ➔ Herculaneum ➔ Amalfi ➔ Rome ➔ Malpensa
Murano is located about 20 to 40 minutes by ferry north of Venice depending on where you get on your ferry. Getting there is easy as the ACTV Vaporetto ferries run approximately every 20 minutes. Vaporetto means ‘Steamer’ in English (water vapor from steam engines), and though the ferries no longer run on steam engines, the boats are still as punctual and as much fun as before.
Venice’s ATCV public vaporetto system runs ferries between Venice and Murano constantly every day. The ‘Fondamente Nove’ stop that is located on the north side of the city is the primary departure point for Murano. If you are close to St Marks square you can take lines 4.1 or 4.2 from the ‘San Zaccaria’ stop to get you there also. On the way to Murano you will stop at an interesting little island called ‘San Michele’ which is home to the first renaissance church in Venice along with the huge San Cristiforo cemetery. The cemetery has the Russian composer ‘Igor Stravinsky’ and the Austrian mathematician and physicist ‘Christian Doppler’ (the ‘Doppler Effect’) resting there.
Crowds really build during the day so leave early in the day or later in the afternoon when people are returning.
If there is one piece of advice I want you to remember while reading this page is to buy a multi day Venezia Day Pass if you are there for more than a day or so. The Venezia day pass lets you get on and off all of the local waterborne transportations services as many time as you like within a 24 hour period. We bought ours online before we got there and were really glad we did.
Benefits of getting a Venezia Daily Pass …
- You are likely to make mistakes when rushing on or off a vaporetto ferry. If you got on the wrong one, no problem, just get off on the next stop and look for the correct one. No additional COST required to buy another ticket and no additional TIME spent lining up to buy another ticket.
- There are small automatic ticketing machines where you can buy your tickets. On more than one occasion, we say about 30 people circling the machine standing about 5 people deep trying to get to it to buy a ticket. When they finally purchased one and got in line to get on the next vaporetto, almost an hour would have gone by.
- If you have a hop on hop off pass, or purchased one on the official app you could have walked by all of the lines and scanned your pass before boarding.
- If you do the math, it may actually NOT save you money buying the multi day pass (if you figure you will use it x amount of times per day), BUT for convenience and saving time, I think it is a good investment.
Other things that may be of interest to you on Murano are;
- Campo Santo Stefano
If you look at the skyline you will see the 19th century clock tower beside the Church of St. Stephen. Below the clocktower in the center of this square you will see the blue glass sculpture ‘Comet Glass Star’ by Simone Cenedese. Its worth a quick visit. - Basilica di Santa Maria e San Donato
This is Murano Duomo and has byzantine mosaics covering its floor and celling. Various religious relics are also on display. - Museo del Vetro glass museum
Shows everything about Venetian glass over the centuries. Want to see some history about glass work, then this should be your first stop.
Of the two islands Murano and Burano, we felt that Murano was a little too ‘lifeless’ for lack of a better word. All of the smaller glass works for sale looks like they came from factories mass producing them in China (and perhaps they did as I couldn’t imagine they could turn a profit making all of these by hand).
Due to the proliferation of cheap Chinese knock-offs, real Murano glass art has a small “Vetro Murano Artistico” trademark sticker on it, so watch out for that if you want to buy an authentic glass souvenir from the island.
While it is interesting to walk around and look at what Murano has to offer, I would suggest budgeting more time at Burano with its more colorful buildings and fun canals.
There are a number of other things you can see and do on Murano. Hopefully this page has given you a good starting point to begin your explorations.
