The Estonian-Italian collaborative exhibition ‘VENEZIA – Queen of the Seas’ opened at the Seaplane Harbour on 25 March 2023 and was scheduled to be open until the beginning of January 2024. In the course of interim negotiations, it was agreed that the exhibition at the Seaplane Harbour will remain open until 3 September. This is due to a restriction imposed by the Italian Cultural Heritage Agency[LI1]  on some rare exhibits, due to which they are not allowed to be taken out of the country for more than one year. Prior to Tallinn, the exhibition was shown at the M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark in Helsingør.

The exhibits originate from a variety of Italian museums and private collections, and the exhibition was organised by a large international team, in which our Italian partners were Expona and Contemporanea Progetti.

The rarest and most valuable exhibits at the Venice exhibition are the paintings of the eighteenth-century Venetian artist Giovanni Antonio Canal, also known as Canaletto, the most expensive of which is estimated to be worth around 4 million euros.

The branding of the exhibition ‘VENEZIA – Queen of the Seas’, created in cooperation with the agency Tabasco, was awarded the third place, or the Bronze Egg, in the 2023 Golden Egg competition of the Estonian Marketing Association.

The Estonian Maritime Museum would also like to thank the Italian Embassy in Estonia and the city governments of Venice and Tallinn for their support for and contribution to the joint exhibition.

Thank you to everyone who has already visited the exhibition! Those who have not yet had the chance to see the Venice exhibition are invited to take the opportunity to see the rare exhibits and precious paintings before they return home to Italy.