Giardini della Biennale Garden
Public gardens associated with the Venice Biennale and its national pavilions. The Giardini extend Castello towards a more airy, modern, and institutional Venice. Among the trees, international modernist architectures, and the proximity of the lagoon, they offer a very different face from the central districts, but with the Venetian ability to transform an improbable setting into a coherent landscape.
Giardini della Biennale, Art and Green Spaces in Venice
The Giardini della Biennale are located in the eastern part of the Castello sestiere, beyond Via Garibaldi and near Sant’Elena. They occupy part of the vast Napoleonic gardens, one of the main green spaces of the historic city, and have been for over a century one of the major sites of the Venice Biennale.
The gardens were laid out between 1808 and 1812 at the request of Napoleon, as part of a profound transformation of this extremity of the city. The project, entrusted to the Venetian architect Giannantonio Selva, required the demolition of several religious buildings and the reorganization of land previously occupied by convents, vegetable gardens, and spaces linked to the lagoon.
The creation of this public park introduced to Venice an unusual landscape of wide avenues, lawns, and large trees. After the narrow alleys and tightly packed facades of the center, the Giardini suddenly give the impression that the city loosens and opens up towards the Saint Mark’s Basin.
The Pavilions of the Venice Biennale
In 1895, the Giardini hosted the first International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice, origin of the current Biennale. Its success was immediate: more than 200,000 visitors attended the first edition, durably establishing this sector of Castello in the international cultural geography.
The Central Pavilion initially formed the heart of the exhibition. From 1907, several countries began to build their own permanent buildings, the first being that of Belgium. Today the Giardini bring together twenty-nine foreign pavilions, built at different periods and entrusted to architects such as Josef Hoffmann, Gerrit Rietveld, Alvar Aalto, Carlo Scarpa, Sverre Fehn, and James Stirling.
The site alternately hosts the Art Biennale and the Architecture Biennale. The exhibitions are distributed between the Central Pavilion and the national pavilions, while another major part of the event occupies the neighboring spaces of the Arsenale. However, not all participating countries have a building in the Giardini: many exhibit at the Arsenale or in palaces, churches, and other places scattered across Venice.
Visiting the pavilions depends on the calendar and opening conditions of the Biennale. During exhibitions, you should allow several hours to properly cover the site. Outside these periods, the spaces reserved for the event are generally closed, but the nearby public gardens, quays, and promenades towards Sant’Elena remain interesting.
Sources and Further Information
La Biennale di Venezia – Giardini della Biennale ; La Biennale di Venezia – history of the Art Biennale ; Venezia Unica – Napoleonic gardens.
Map and route
In the Castello sestiere
