The Historical Naval Museum is located close to the Arsenal in one of the old granaries of Venice and was founded in 1919. Its collections recall those made under the Venetian Republic when the models of the ship-builders where kept in the Arsenal, in a special building , la “Casa dei Modelli”. This was the archive of the models during the Venetian Republic. Scale models were used instead of drawn projects: the ship were built starting from these models. Some of these old models survived the ransacking of the Arsenale in 1797 and are now kept in the museum. Here Venetian Ships and Boats are exhibited as well as models of ships built in the Arsenale during the French and Austrian occupation (1797-1866) and old and current models of the Italian Navy. The variety of the exhibited models goes beyond the venetian boundaries and it contains a huge collection of scale models of fishing boats used in seas of China and far east.
The most extraordinary model is the one of the Bucintoro, the Doge’s ceremony ship. In the rooms of the museum original relics coming from the sea wars are exhibited
The museum also includes the Ship Pavilion, located close to the Arsenal bridge (Visits at fixed hours on Saturday and Sunday – max 25 people)
A two thousand square meters area, in which some examples of Venetian boats are exposed: ancient ceremonial gondolas, working lagoon boat and military ships.
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