Venice Turns 100

Venice is celebrating its hundredth birthday, and the exhibit built for the occasion is entering its final stretch. "Venice Turns 100!" has been running at the Venice Museum & Archives since last September, and it closes for good on Wednesday, August 26 — which gives you about two weeks to catch it.

The story it tells starts with John Nolen, the man often called the dean of American city planning, who was hired to design Venice from a blank slate in the 1920s. The city opened to the public in 1926, laid out to Nolen's plan of broad avenues, parks, and that unmistakable Northern Italian look. The exhibit charts the century since through vintage photographs, maps, artifacts, and oral histories — all inside a 1927 landmark building at 351 Nassau Street South that is a period piece in its own right.

It's easy to forget how unusual Venice is. Most Florida towns grew up wherever the railroad or the river happened to put them; Venice was drawn on paper first, on purpose, by one of the best planners in the country. A century later, the bones of that plan are still what make downtown Venice feel the way it does.

One quirk worth knowing before you go: the museum keeps limited hours — Monday through Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. — so this is a weekday outing, not a weekend one. The centennial celebration itself rolls on into 2027, but the exhibit won't.

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