In 1276 the island of Murano became a self-governed enclave within the Republic, with its own judiciary, its own administration and a Libro d’Oro to register its nobility. By the primeval sixteenth century Murano had thirty thousand inhabitants, and was a favourite summer retreat for Venice’s upper classes, who could lay out gardens here that were far more extensive than those in the cramped centre of the city. The Mocenigo family had a house here, and Caterina Cornaro often stayed at her family’s palace. The intellectual life of the island was especially healthy in the seventeenth century, when literature, philosophy, the occult and the sciences were discussed in the numerous small accademie that flourished here. In the same century the mint on Murano was granted the privilege of forging the tribute medals known as oselle . But Murano nowadays owes its fame entirely to its glass-blowing industry , and its main fondamente are crowded with shops selling the fruit of the furnaces, some of it fine, most of it repulsive and some of it laughably pretentious. You’ll see little in the showrooms to equal the remarkable work on display in the Murano glass museum, and even that takes second place to the island’s beautiful main church.