Coinciding with EXPO 2015 and its key theme “Feeding the planet. Energy for Life”, from September 26, 2015 to February 14, 2016, the evocative rooms of the Doge’s Apartment in the Doge’s Palace will host a detailed, heterogeneous exhibition dedicated to Venice and the complex network of support systems that the city acquired over the centuries so it could develop, grow and prosper.

Produced by Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, and Fondazione di Venezia, with the patronage of the Unesco Office Site “Venice and its Lagoon” and EXPO 2015, curated by Donatella Calabi, with scientific coordination by Gabriella Belli and a scientific board that includes some of the most important scholars and experts in this field, the exhibition offers an all-embracing overview of life in the lagoon with an innovative multimedia and interactive itinerary and a multidisciplinary approach combined with the traditional use of historic papers, paintings and engravings.

Almost half a century after the famous exhibition at Palazzo Grassi (Historical Exhibition of the Veneto Lagoon, 1970), this outstanding archive, iconographic and textual documentation has been enriched by the use of digitalisation, thanks to the work carried out by a group of young researchers from IUAV University of Venice.

From some of the most important Venetian collections – State Archive, The Marciana National Library, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, the Academy Galleries – and the Istituto Storico di Cultura dell’Arma del Genio of Rome, the over one hundred works on display are therefore accompanied by the “digital narration” of paintings, video-projections on three-dimensional models of the lagoon, and virtual reconstructions developed by the Laboratory of Phototopography and Cartography and the VISU Laboratory of IUAV University in Venice, ‘submerging’ the visitor in a highly evocative and enthralling experience.