The Armoury
Various armourers and gunsmiths · Fourteenth to seventeenth century
Four rooms packed with swords, halberds, crossbows, muskets and full suits of armour make up the armoury, and they are one of the most surprising stops on the route. This was not a museum collection but a working arsenal. The weapons were kept here, next to the rooms of the Council of Ten, so that the guards of the palace could arm themselves within minutes if there was a riot in the square or a plot inside the building. Over the centuries the Republic added trophies from its wars and gifts from foreign rulers, and by the seventeenth century the rooms were already shown to distinguished visitors as a display of Venetian might.
Look for the suit of armour said to have belonged to Henry the Fourth of France, given to the Republic in 1603, and for the armour of the condottiere Gattamelata, who fought for Venice in the fifteenth century. There are Turkish weapons captured at Lepanto, a rare early multi barrelled gun, and a small culverin with twenty barrels that could fire in sequence. Among the curiosities is a chastity belt, almost certainly a later fake, and a series of two handed swords for the palace guards. Notice how the halberds and swords are arranged in fans and sunbursts on the walls, a decorative habit that goes back to the eighteenth century.
The collection was partly dispersed after the fall of the Republic in 1797, when the French carried away some of the finest pieces, but more than two thousand objects remain. In the last room, look at the bust of Francesco Morosini, the general who recaptured the Peloponnese, and at the lantern taken from a Turkish galley. A memorable detail is a small iron device in one of the cases, a so called poisoned arrow launcher, the kind of object that fed the legends about the secret methods of the Council of Ten.
Did You Know? The armoury was placed next to the Council of Ten so that the palace guard could be armed within minutes in an emergency.
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