As Venice marks its 1,600th anniversary on 25 March 2021 with celebrations for the rest of the year, our Venezia 1600 project celebrates the incredible soundscapes of the most unique-sounding city on Earth.
VENEZIA1600
"Just as it looks like no other city, it sounds like no other city."
Explore the real and reimagined sounds of Venice by artists from all over the world on the map below – and experience our “Sedimento” audiovisual composition based on a journey through La Serenissima.
Sedimento: a sonic study of Venice
Sedimento is a piece originally commissioned for the Audiograft Festival in 2020, taking listeners on an audiovisual journey across the city of Venice – find out more here.
Download the Sounds from Venice album
Explore more sounds from Venice
A moment of calm in Venice
Another gorgeous field recording from Venice, Italy, as we experience through sound a moment of calm in the late afternoon on Riva di Biasio, looking out at the the Grand Canal. The classic sounds of boat traffic cruising past that make Venice sound like no other city on Earth. A vaporetto (water taxi) passes by […]
Four o’clock in a perfect world
A walkthrough across Venice’s iconic Rialto Bridge, through the market at the bottom of the bridge, and out into Campo San Giacomo di Rialto. In this quiet square just away from the hustle and bustle of one of Venice’s most popular tourist spots, all we can hear is the gentle trickle of a water fountain, […]
Sounding in the new year in Venice
A new sound for a new year, with this field recording taken in Venice on New Year’s Eve 2021, outside Santa Lucia train station in Venice. The bells nearest the train station are ringing for early evening mass while people hurry in and out of the station to carry on with their new year plans. […]
Two sides of life in Venice
Today’s sounds highlight two distinct sides of the sonic life of Venice – the better-known world of heavy tourism, and the daily life of Venetian citizens far away from Piazza San Marco or the Rialto Bridge. Visiting Venice on a normal weekday in September 2020, there were far fewer tourists to be seen than ever […]
Adventures in Murano, Venice
Two absolutely beautiful pieces for you today from the island of Murano in Venice (and you can hear more of our sounds from Venice here). Murano is world-famous for its glass-making master craftsmen, a centuries-old tradition of hand-blown and hand-shaped glass passed down through generations. Many glass factories do demonstrations of their craft, but this […]
While Pellestrina dreams
Pellestrina is an idyllic, unspoilt little island in the south of the Venetian lagoon, much less frequented by tourists than the likes of Lido or Murano. Here we’re sitting on harbour side of this unusually long, thin island, enjoying an unspoilt and peaceful view that’s only interrupted by the roaring of passing speedboats and motorboats […]
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"As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of [the city] as it is today should contain all [the city's] past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the bags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Grand Prix winner and Coup de Coeur winner, Académie Charles Cros
