Scuola Grande dei Carmini

The Scuola dei Carmini, designed by Francesco Caustello and Baldassare Longhena and dedicated to St. Mary of Mount Carmel, was raised to the status of Scuola Grande in 1767.
Its brethren were lay citizens, with the exclusion of aristocratic and clerical figures.

The School’s aim was to give religious and economic support to the brothers, to provide alms to the poor, to assist the sick and contribute to their funerals, to provide a dowry for deserving young women to enable them to marry or enter a convent.

The internal rooms of the School have entirely preserved the original antique furniture, consisting of important oil paintings, rich stucco ceilings and original carved wooden dossals. In the Chapter Room, Giambattista Tiepolo painted - between 1739 and 1749 - the nine incomparable canvasses on the ceiling, depicting the theological and cardinal virtues, other than symbolic attitudes of the spirit; the paintings all refer to the Virgin, angels and cherubs bearing the scapular, the symbol of devotion, and the mariegola, the statute listing the confraternity’s rules; in the center, the large painting depicts "The apparition of Our Lady of Carmel to St. Simon Stock while giving him the scapular".

The Archive and the Hotel Rooms also contain masterpieces by G.B. Piazzetta (“Judith and Holofernes”) and by Padovanino (“The Assumption of the Virgin”).

Hours

Opening hours From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Admission tickets:
- 7€ Full
- 5€ Reduced for visitors over 65 and students
- Free entrance for children up to 6 years of age

Closing days: Christmas and New Year's Eve

Contacts
Scuola Grande dei Carmini
Venezia, Dorsoduro 2616 - 2617
30123 - Venezia
Tel. 041-5289420 - Fax 041-5289420