Burano

Interesting facts

In the winter of 1872 the lace school was saved by Vincenza Memo, the last lacemaker who knew all the old stitches, teaching a local schoolteacher.

The revival was backed by Countess Andriana Marcello, who won lace orders from aristocrats and royal households across Europe.

Burano lace is worked with a needle alone, without a pillow, a technique known in Italian as punto in aria, stitch in the air.

According to legend, Burano lace began when a fisherman who resisted the sirens' song was given a veil of sea foam for his bride.

The island first appears in writing in 840, named as Burani in a treaty between Venice and the Frankish emperor Lothair.

The only square, Piazza Baldassare Galuppi, was made by filling in a canal and honours the 18th-century composer born on the island in 1706.

The campanile of San Martino leans because its foundations, set on wooden piles like much of Venice, have partly given way.

San Martino holds a Crucifixion painted by Giambattista Tiepolo in the 1720s.

According to legend, the relics of Burano's patron saints arrived in a stone sarcophagus that floated across the water and came ashore on the island.

Burano was a separate municipality until 1923, when it finally won its long-requested merger with the city of Venice.

Why it is worth it

Burano's houses are painted in one of a fixed set of colours, and if you want to repaint yours, the island's tradition — enforced today with real bureaucratic teeth — requires you to request permission and match a shade already assigned to your specific plot of land. The custom supposedly began as a practical fix rather than a design choice: fishermen returning through Venice's fog-bound lagoon needed to spot their own houses from the water, so each family picked a colour distinct enough to see from a boat. Whether that's the literal origin or a tidy story attached after the fact, the result is a working town that looks, by accident, like a piece of concept art.

The island's other claim to fame nearly disappeared entirely. Burano needle lace reached its peak in the 1500s and 1600s, sewn stitch by stitch without any canvas backing — a technique so labour-intensive that a single large piece could take a lacemaker a year or more, and pieces became prized possessions of European nobility from Paris to Vienna. Cheaper machine-made lace from northern Europe gutted the trade by the late 1700s, and the craft nearly died out until a training school opened on the island in 1872 specifically to keep a handful of surviving elderly lacemakers' knowledge from being lost. Genuine hand-worked Burano lace is now made by a small, ageing number of practitioners, and it is expensive for a reason machine imitations can't fake.

One more detail worth looking for: the bell tower of the church of San Martino leans visibly off its base, a tilt severe enough that from certain angles in photographs it looks like it's about to go over — Burano's own quieter answer to Pisa, standing over a lagoon town a fraction of the size.

Getting there

9 km from Lido. Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE) is about 6 km away.

Plan your visit

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Burano

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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