Museo Correr Historical Timeline

Origins

Teodoro Correr, born into a Venetian noble family, spent his life gathering paintings, coins, weapons, and everyday objects documenting Venetian history. On his death in 1830, he bequeathed the entire collection to the city of Venice.

Turning points

The collection moved between several buildings before settling in 1922 into its present home in the Napoleonic Wing and Procuratie Nuove, on the west side of Piazza San Marco directly facing St. Mark's Basilica.

Influential people

The building itself long predates the museum -- the Procuratie Nuove was built for the Procurators of St. Mark, the Republic's senior magistrates, continuing Jacopo Sansovino's design across the square. Napoleon later had the small church of San Geminiano demolished to build a ballroom linking the wing to the rest of the complex, the space now known as the Ala Napoleonica.

Cultural evolution

Over the 20th century the museum's holdings grew far beyond Correr's own original bequest, absorbing further civic collections of Venetian art, coinage, and Republic-era regalia, and expanding to include a dedicated Neoclassical sculpture gallery for the works of Antonio Canova.

Present-day significance

Museo Correr today anchors Venice's network of civic museums, connecting internally to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale and the Biblioteca Marciana's monumental halls, and is usually visited on the same ticket as the Doge's Palace.