This unique city offers so many places to be visited. Many tourists like to see the highligths of Venice: Saint Mark’s square and the area of Rialto bridge. Others want to experience the hidden city, discovering the secret treasures, small churches and not famous museums.
If you are looking for quietness and if you want to be in touch with distant cultures, a guided tour of the Museum of Oriental Art is the proper thing to do.
The top floor of Ca’ Pesaro Museum of Modern Art houses a rich collection of Oriental art, especially from Japan, but also from China, Indonesia and Myanmar.
Climbing the staircase, you will be surrounded by halberds, daggers, armors, Japanese swords decorated with shining mother-of-pearl. At the end of the staircase, you will be welcomed by a beatiful and refined sedan chair made of lacquer and gold on wood, located in one of the first rooms of this unique museum in Venice.
There are beatiful and unusual painted shells from Japan displayed. They date back to the nineteenth century (Edo period) and they are painted using different colours, ink and gold. It was a game in Japan, consisting in using couples of shells, symbol of conjugal fidelity.
In other rooms, there are lacquers, vases, fine jades and chessboards coming from the country where Marco Polo lived for several years, during the thirteenth century. Visitors can also see some pieces of elegant Chinese furniture of the eighteenth century: these pieces are made of hand-carved wood and decorated with objects in jade and fine porcelain, typical of that period in China.
The Indonesian figures of the shadow theater will enchant you because of their own details and skilfulness.
This kind of theater is one of the oldest in the world, related to religiosity and local traditions. According to the traditions, by this kind of theater, the ancestors could be in touch with their own descendants. The figures are made of painted and gilded leather and they represent demons, nobles, ministers. Looking at them, visitors’ feelings can be different: power, strength, fear, in any case they do not allow you to look away!
Those who visit the museum in this period will appreciate the temporary exhibition “The Wonders of the State of Chu” until September 25th, 2016. The appassionate visitors can really admire several objects, items of this magnificent and powerful Ancient Kingdom before the unification of China in 221 b.C. by the first Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, the one who wanted the famous Terracotta Army, located in the city of Xian.
It is actually an unexpected surprise for tourists coming from China to look at all those archaeological finds typical of Hubei province, the heart of the state of Chu. There are bronzes, perfume burners, jade items, ritual vases, flutes, lutes.
Concluding with some questions: why is there a Far East art collection in Venice? Would you like to admire the beatiful kimonos and other typical artifacts? Do you play some musical instruments and do you want to have an idea of the Oriental ones?
Here we are at your disposal for showing you the wonders of the Far East!
Contacts: info@guidedtoursinvenice.com
