600 Years of Glassmaking in Murano in One Family

When I hear about a family business in its third or sixth generation, I’m impressed. It says something about the business, and even more about a family that keeps its kids interested. A friend in my Italian conversation group once came back from Chianti with a sadder story: the winemakers he met were in their seventies, and nobody younger was around to take over.

So imagine my delight at the Seguso family of Murano, who have been making glass since 1397.

One family, more than six centuries

The Seguso line of glassmakers is documented in the Venetian archives back to 3 May 1397, and the family has worked glass on Murano without a break ever since. That’s more than 600 years and over twenty generations. In 1605 the family was entered in Murano’s Libro d’Oro, the Golden Book of the island’s leading glassmaking families, which carried privileges close to nobility.

The family’s best years came late. After the Venetian Republic fell to Napoleon in 1797, Murano’s industry nearly collapsed, and it was a Seguso, Antonio (born 1829), who helped revive forgotten techniques in the 19th-century comeback. His son Giovanni worked for a time with Paolo Venini, who liked to say that “Nane Patare” (Giovanni’s nickname) taught him everything he knew about glass. In 1933 the next Antonio co-founded the furnace that became Seguso Vetri d’Arte, one of the most inventive workshops on the island in the mid-20th century. The family sold the brand in 1974 and bought it, with its archives, back in 2007. Gianluca, Pierpaolo and Gianandrea Seguso run it today, and Seguso pieces sit in more than 75 museums, MoMA and the V&A among them. The story is told in more detail in Seguso’s Wikipedia entry.

Why glass ended up on Murano

Glassmaking in the Veneto is older than Venice’s grand palaces. The earliest furnace found in the lagoon, on Torcello, dates from the 7th or 8th century. By the 13th century the city was full of glassworks, and glassworks catch fire. In 1291 the Republic ordered every glassmaker in Venice to move out to Murano, a short row across the water. Fire safety was the official reason. Keeping the trade’s secrets in one place, where the state could watch them, was the other.

Venice guarded those secrets hard. Around 1271 the guild had already forbidden members to reveal their methods outside the city. A glassmaker who left without permission was ordered home, and if he refused, his family could be jailed. The carrot matched the stick: by the 14th century Murano’s master glassmakers could carry swords, were immune from some prosecutions, and saw their daughters marry into Venice’s richest families.

What they made with that protection changed European glass. In the 15th century Angelo Barovier developed cristallo, a nearly colorless glass that was the finest in the world. Murano also gave us lattimo (milk-white glass that passed for porcelain), millefiori (thousands of tiny colored flowers), aventurine glass flecked with copper that looks like gold, and eventually the best mirrors in Europe. The monopoly leaked away from the late 16th century as glassmakers slipped off to set up furnaces abroad, and the island didn’t really recover until the art-glass revival of the 1920s.

Why it’s worth the trip

Murano is the easiest lagoon island to add to a Venice visit, and it gives you three things central Venice can’t.

• Watching glass being worked. Seeing a master gather molten glass on a pipe and pull a horse out of it in a couple of minutes is genuinely good, even if many of the free furnace shows near the vaporetto stops exist mainly to walk you into a showroom. Enjoy the show, then leave your wallet in your pocket until you’ve looked around.
• The Glass Museum. The Museo del Vetro, in the Gothic Palazzo Giustinian by the Museo stop, has been open since 1861 and traces glass from ancient Egypt to Carlo Scarpa. It’s open daily, 10:00 to 18:00 from April to October and to 17:00 in winter. A full ticket is about 15 euros in 2026. The Island Museums ticket, about 20 euros, adds the Lace Museum on Burano and the museum on Torcello, so if you’re visiting all three islands, buy that one.
• The island itself. Walk past the glass shops to the church of Santa Maria e San Donato, with its 12th-century mosaic floor. Murano is quieter than Venice by mid-afternoon, and a slow lunch there is one of the better cheap pleasures of the lagoon.

Buying glass without getting fooled

Plenty of the “Murano glass” sold in Venice was made in Asia or Eastern Europe. Estimates put imitations at 40 to 45 percent of the market, and most tourists can’t tell the difference. The makers’ answer is the Vetro Artistico Murano trademark, created in 1994 to certify pieces made on the island, so look for it. Better still, buy from a named furnace and ask to see the piece being made or to visit the workshop. Seguso’s furnace is at Fondamenta Radi 20 on Murano, with a boutique in Dorsoduro, and since 2012 the family has offered guided furnace visits under the name Seguso Experience. Check seguso.com for current visit booking.

Getting to Murano

The vaporetto is the way to go. The 4.1 and 4.2 lines leave Fondamente Nove, on Venice’s north shore, and take about ten minutes to Murano, with several stops around the island, including Museo for the Glass Museum. A single ride costs about 9.50 euros in 2026, so if you’re also going on to Burano and Torcello, a 24-hour pass (about 25 euros) pays for itself. Don’t take the “free” boat a hotel or shop offers: it delivers you straight to one showroom’s sales floor. Our Venice transportation guide covers tickets, and if you have another half day, read up on Burano and Torcello too.