The island treasure, today: the “Nuova Manica Lunga” by Michele De Lucchi = Il tesoro di un’isola, oggi: la “Nuova Manica Lunga” di Michele De Lucchi

For centuries, the islands of the Venetian lagoon have guarded invaluable "treasures". Not only treasures in the most fairy-tale sense of the term, such as those that have come to the Serenissima from an East as distant as it is fascinating, but also, and above all, treasures of the history of art and architecture, which have reached some of the highest forms of expression right in these places. Nevertheless, the most ancient history is not the only one holding those treasures that are offered to the ones passing through the restless waters of the lagoon, with the wayfarer’s serenity or the traveler’s impatience. Although chronicle and legend, intertwining with one another, narrate Venice as a city hostile to modernity - a stronghold of "conservatism" where even Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, and Le Corbusier failed to see their projects realized - the ferment one can breathe in the lagoon today tells of a contemporary architectural scene that is decidedly alive and articulate. In this quite singular urban reality, where the delicate balance between safeguarding the past and desiring to project into the future is a ground as breeding as slippery for architectural design, several contemporary experiments of great interest have found their place over the past decades. Such is the case of an actual “treasure within a treasure” hidden on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, in a wing of the former monastery complex, now the headquarters of the Giorgio Cini Foundation. In the “Manica Lunga” that Giovanni Buora designed at the end of the 15th century, in fact, between 2005 and 2009 Michele De Lucchi gave life to a new, large library, entirely dedicated to the History of Art and intended to hold more than 100.000 volumes.