ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, any stroller walking the north-side quay of Venice might see the smoke rising from Murano's glass furnaces and, with the wind right, the stroller might hear the bell at Santo Stefano when it calls the glassmakers to mass. Murano is one of the obligatory stops on visits organized for merchants, pilgrims, ambassadors, and princes, all come to discover the Serenissima's splendours.Murano, meanwhile, is a community more closed than others. The nature of Murano is complexly layered: it is a town endowed with many urban infrastructures – bridges, wells, a communal square, but it is also a largely agricultural island, with gardens, orchards, fields, a mill, salt pans, and many fishponds. Murano is harder to access, especially because the protection of the secrets of glass manufacture and the production monopoly both limit, indeed forbid, foreigners to work in the glassworks.
