Murano predates its glassmaking fame by centuries. Romans settled the islands, and refugees from the mainland towns of Altinum and Oderzo arrived in the sixth century, fleeing barbarian invasions. The islanders fished, produced salt, and controlled a trading port on nearby Sant'Erasmo. Murano was prosperous enough to mint its own coins and maintain its own Grand Council, modeled on Venice's. Camaldolese monks established the Monastery of St. Michael on one of the islands, which became a renowned center of learning and printing. Fra Mauro, the cartographer whose world map was among the most important of the fifteenth century, was a monk there. Napoleon's forces suppressed the monastery in 1810 and expelled the monks four years later. The island became the San Michele cemetery, Venice's principal burial ground, where Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Ezra Pound now rest among the cypress trees.

The glassmakers of Murano occupied a strange position in Venetian society -- honored and imprisoned at once. By the fourteenth century, they ranked among the island's most prominent citizens. Their daughters married into Venice's wealthiest families. They were allowed to carry swords, a privilege normally reserved for the nobility. But the Republic guarded its monopoly with the severity of a state secret. Glassmakers who attempted to leave could face imprisonment, and their families were held as leverage. Despite the risks, some escaped, establishing furnaces in England, the Netherlands, and across Europe, carrying techniques that the Republic had hoped to keep forever. Venice partially lost its monopoly by the end of the sixteenth century, as enough defectors had taught foreign competitors the fundamentals. But Murano's artisans continued to refine their craft -- enameled glass, milk glass, imitation gemstones -- staying ahead through innovation even as the walls of secrecy crumbled.

Beyond glass, Murano holds treasures that most visitors overlook. The Church of Santa Maria e San Donato, dating to the seventh century and rebuilt in the twelfth, contains a Byzantine mosaic pavement of remarkable intricacy and age. Behind the altar hang bones said to be those of a dragon slain by Saint Donatus in the fourth century -- in reality, the remains of a large marine animal, but the legend has persisted for over a millennium. The Church of San Pietro Martire houses paintings by Giovanni Bellini, including a luminous altarpiece, and the Ballarin family chapel built in 1506. The Palazzo da Mula preserves its medieval facade along the canal. In the fifteenth century, Murano became fashionable as a retreat for wealthy Venetians, who built palaces and cultivated the island's orchards and gardens. That era of leisured elegance faded, but its architectural traces remain among the glassworks.

Murano's furnaces have never gone out, though the flame burns lower than it once did. Around 260 glass companies still operate on the island, employing roughly 1,100 people. The Museo del Vetro, housed in the Palazzo Giustinian, displays glasswork spanning from Egyptian antiquity to contemporary art glass. Venini, Barovier & Toso, Seguso, and Simone Cenedese maintain factories here, and the oldest active company, Pauly & C., has operated since 1866. The artisans still employ centuries-old techniques -- blowing, shaping, pulling threads of molten glass into chandeliers and sculptures. But they face competition from cheap imports labeled as Murano glass, which prompted the Veneto Region to establish the Vetro Artistico Murano trademark in 1994, certifying genuine island-made products. One Murano-born craftsman left a mark far from the lagoon: Simone Giuseppe Belotti became Royal Architect to the King of Poland in the seventeenth century and built a Warsaw palace he named Muranow after his homeland. The district still bears that name today.