15/09/2009
Torcello basilica: a Millennium Exhibition
Torcello basilica: Diocesan Museum
The light of Byzantinum, the color of Torcello and the gold of Venice: these are the elements that help define Venice's Origins Between West and East, the exhibition Venice had long waited for and that has recently opened at the Diocesan Museum. It is the mian event in the program that opened in 2008 and celebrates a thousand years of history at the one of the most important monuments around the Venice Lagoon (and arguably the oldest) the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta on Torcello. Its architectonic and decorative elements, which adorn its interior and are the fines examples of Venetian-Byzantine art, are the subject of this exhibition, presented by the National Millennium Committee established by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.
The Torcello basilica, with the Episcopal complex - Torcello once hosted the local bishops' residences - and the adjacent Rotunda of Santa Fosca are all that remains from an entire city founded around the 4th century by residents of the old Altino Who settled here to find refuge from the Lombard invasion. Its history, not entirely certain even today, goes back to the year 639 - according to an inscription on a foundation stone (which some scholars argue is the first written Venetian document). But this dating is only hypothetical. Concrete evidence dates the building of the Basilica to the year 1008. At that time Torcello was already an important urban settlement with plenty of buildings, civic and religious, a center of all commercial activities around the lagoon.