This dock is located right near our first stop on tour. Wherever you come into the city, get off at the Murano Museo Vaporetto stop. This trip takes just short of half an hour. If you want to get to Murano from the Santa Lucia Railroad Station, take Line 3 directly to Murano. Take lines 4.1 and 4.2 from the Fondamente Nove dock. Practical Information How to get thereįrom the north edge of the main island of Venice, a Vaporetto only takes 23 minutes to reach Murano Island. Stepping onto the island truly is like stepping back in time. While some new modern techniques have been employed today, many of the original ways of doing things remain unchanged. Many original families who started their businesses in Murano are still there. Keeping them happy was of the utmost importance to ensure they didn’t run off to another country. These artisans needed to be fed and entertained. Businesses to support the workers began to grow around the area. Each guild had a kind of union that oversaw their living conditions and day-to-day work. On the islands, glassworkers were organized into different guilds. By keeping everyone together, the government felt they could better control their movements and who they spoke to about what! Who knew pretty things could be such a sinister business? Glass Guilds Spies were prevalent, and glasswork was a lucrative business. The Serenissima (Venetian Republic) needed to ensure no one else could just easily visit without being noticed. This was to ensure the secrets of the great Murano glass didn’t get out! Glass artists were practically locked away on the island. But there was another reason for the move. There, they were able to build larger studios with huge furnaces that multiple companies could share. So, in the 12th century, they moved the glassworkers over to the islands of Murano. Not only that, the dozens of burning furnaces meant the temperature in the city would rise greatly when they were in production. With houses being so close, a fire that got out of control could spell disaster for the city. The furnaces could get up to 15,000 degrees Celcius. Glass blowing was a dangerous business, especially inside a cramped island-like town like Venice. This enormous endeavour required millions and millions of pieces of glass to complete. A church covered floor to ceiling in glasswork to dazzle anyone who entered. Inspired by Byzantine art and architecture mosaics, the grand Basilica of San Marco wanted its own mosaic cathedral of glass. No real pursuit of the business of wine would be complete without both perspectives.When Venice was first built, the city had a great need for glass mosaics. But those who pursue beauty and truth and success in wine will experience rewards far beyond the economic marketplace. Certainly there are generically, formulaically, manipulated, mass-produced examples whose main purpose is to enhance someone’s bottom line. Wine bottles, at their most essential best, are filled with a substance that reflects and radiates a strong sense of place, climate, and human caring that is sometimes difficult to articulate but that can be experienced at the hand of a master winegrower. Through readings, videos, travel and personal contact, students in the course will experience the magic and mystery that make wine much more than a typical product. The world of wine is populated with many individuals who are driven by passion as much as by economic success. The class will visit wineries, wine taverns (called heurigers in Vienna), retailers/wholesalers, and trade associations in order to grasp the full picture of wine “in context.” Essential to this practical approach is also the instructor’s long association with the topic and the region and his personal experience as wine grower, consumer, and traveler to many of the wine world’s regions.īut there is a richer, deeper, less tangible, component to the course as well. Vienna is singularly situated in one of the most compact, yet diverse, wine regions in the world. The course is not meant to prepare students for any particular profession, certainly not wine-making itself, but it will provide the background and the vocabulary needed to begin navigating the fascinating opportunities in the relevant fields of viticulture, oenology, and logistics that comprise the business landscape. Along the way, we will encounter environmental, scientific, sociological, legal, economic, and practical issues that will explain, in part, the complex nature of the many steps needed to assure that the various relevant enterprises have a reasonable chance of success. This course takes a comprehensive and practical look at the process and the important factors that bring wine from field to table.
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