The Querini Stampalia Foundation: much more than a library

For Venetian people the Querini Stampalia Foundation is much more than a library

Located in the historical city centre, this cultural place has been welcoming many generations of high school and university students, being a gathering point with a long history and an open cosmopolitan soul that the Venetians hold dear.

The Querini Stampalia Foundation was born in 1869 because of the will of count Giovanni Querini Stampalia, the last descendant of the Venetian noble family. In his will, Giovanni imagines a place open to dialogue, knowledge and a gathering point between different cultures, a space dedicated to personal growth and to the diffusion of a kind of knowledge based on personal education and growth.

What Venice is inheriting is a unique institution which has been able to preserve the whole cultural heritage of the Venetian family, a structure where old staircases underwent contemporary architectural restorations by Carlo Scarpa, Valeriano Pastor and Mario Botta, which offers a stimulating and functional frame to individual study and cultural activities.

Scarpa himself probably reached his career peak at the Querini Stampalia Foundation. The entrance, for example, is a unique case of co-existence between water and concrete materials: the Venetian architect gives importance and dignity to this element and makes it integrated part of the space by creating paths and hallways in order to make the water get into the building.

nside the Foundation we find the Library, which is open until late at night and during non-working days as the founder wanted it to be, and the Museum, where we breath that  XVIII century atmosphere thanks to the art works of the Quern Stampalia family, an original nucleus of collections (manuscripts, incurables, printed editions, old geographic maps and engravings) which originated during the noble family’s seven-century-long history.

Admission is free on the ground floor and to the library, the wi-fi, the bar, the wonderful garden by Carlo Scarpa, the bookshop equipped with refined products, but an especially cultural, welcoming and dynamic atmosphere make the Foundation the destination of generations of students, scholars and artists that feel at home here.

All photos by Marco Valmarana, @marcovalmarana, for Venezia da Vivere