News & Stories

Save Venice launched its Torcello campaign in 2019 as a celebratory project for its upcoming 50th Anniversary in 2021. The scope of work is exceptional, as it will resolve both structural concerns of the church’s interior and exterior walls as well as preserve its decorative apparatus, in particular the precious 11th-century mosaics in the central and diaconicon apses.

Conservator and master mosaicist Giovanni Cucco and his team have nearly completed the conservation of the mosaics in the Diaconicon Apse. Work on the central apse surmounted by the Madonna Hodegetria will begin this fall. After identifying areas where the glass mosaic tesserae have lifted from the supporting mortar or detached from the brick wall, conservators inject consolidating agents to re-adhere the mosaic before rinsing and cleaning decades of grime and salt deposits from the surface.

Concurrently, a large team from the Silvio Pierobon firm is working to repair, reinforce, and restore the brick exterior walls, roof, crypt, choir, and conservators are concentrating their efforts on the marble and stone elements in the apses. In collaboration with the Catholic Diocese of Venice, archeologists from the Università Ca’ Foscari are also conducting fieldwork alongside conservators to search for more clues about the history of the church and its foundations.

This urgently-needed conservation work has been made possible thanks to lead sponsors Jon and Barbara Landau who have funded the treatment of the Madonna Hodegetria mosaic of the central apse; principal funders Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, VISA, the Manitou Fund through Nora McNeely Hurley Silo, GRoW @ Annenberg, and Tina Walls; and supporters Casey Kohlberg through The Camalotte Foundation and Molly and David Borthwick.

Following the exceptional high tides of November and December 2019, in partnership with the Embassy of Italy in Washington D.C., Save Venice provided additional support for relief efforts in Santa Maria Assunta through its Immediate Response Fund.

The Italian Ambassador, His Excellency Armando Varricchio noted, “I am particularly pleased about this recent discovery shedding new light into the history of the Serenissima. The restoration work carried out by Save Venice was indeed outstanding. I am proud that this work has been supported by the #AmericaLovesVenice campaign launched last year by the Embassy and Save Venice in cooperation with the Italian diplomatic and consular network in the US. These findings tell us the story of a city with deep roots in the past, that throughout the centuries has always looked at the future, as it does today, yearning for the opportunities of tomorrow.”