The Palazzo Cini Gallery in San Vio, Venice, reopens to the public

Generali pursues its commitment to protecting and promoting Venice’s cultural heritage

The Palazzo Cini Gallery in Venice reopens to the public thanks to the seven-year partnership with Generali, offering the chance to visit its prestigious art collection. The Palazzo, located within the so-called Museum Mile, reopens with the ‘Piranesi Roma Basilico’ exhibition, a juxtaposition of the historic and contemporary, running until 23 November 2020.

‘Piranesi Rome Basilico’ returns to the figure of Piranesi as vedutista, with an original interpretation of his views of Rome set beside the work of the contemporary landscape photographer Gabriele Basilico. Visitors will be able to admire some of the great symbolic landmarks of the eternal city in 25 original prints made in the 18th century by the Venetian engraver, selected from the complete corpus preserved in the Cini graphic art collections, and in 26 views of Rome by the Milanese photographer, taken from the same viewpoint as the Piranesi etchings.
Inspired by writer Marguerite Yourcenar’s wonderful description of Giambattista Piranesi in the early 1960s, Basilico took his camera to all the sites of Piranesi's views to capture their extraordinary modernity.

The Fondazione Giorgio Cini monumental complex on San Giorgio Island also reopened for guided tours in partnership with Generali. The new tour includes the Borges Labyrinth, now accessible for the first time since its creation; visitors can count on a tour guide and a renewed audio guide service that can be downloaded on personal mobile devices upon booking. Furthermore, it will be possible to walk freely in the woodland of the island listening to the audio guide and the original soundtrack, and to discover the Vatican Chapels, the Holy See’s pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Generali has always been committed to promote the access to and enjoyment of historical and cultural heritage, particularly through its project “Valore Cultura”. The collaboration for the reopening of the Fondazione Cini monumental complex is part of a wider project launched by Generali to protect and promote the cultural heritage of Venice; the initiative joins the recent reopening of the Royal Gardens of Piazza San Marco and the restoration of the Procuratie Vecchie.