Warwick Venice Centre

Our history in Venice

We have been teaching in Italy since 1967 and in Venice since 1976. Warwick is the only UK university to have a permanent home in the city, located in the Palazzo Giustinian Lolin.

Dating back to the seventeenth century, with a facade by Baldassare Longhena, our centre provides unique opportunities for students to immerse themselves in the history, art, culture, and myriad complexities of this amazing city.

The ‘Venice’ term allows history and history of art students to study the Italian Renaissance in situ – seeing early modern culture come alive in the buildings and artworks of Venice, led by world-class teachers and experts. Along with history's offering, other departments, such as WBS, Classics, Liberal Arts, and History also offer short courses for their students at the centre, allowing them to learn about luxury leadership, sustainability, resistance, history of medicine, history of music, organised crime, and much more.

These unique programmes have been a pivotal experience for many generations of Warwick students and underline our deep commitment to the arts, to interdisciplinarity, and to international collaborations.

The space is also used by researchers, partners, and a growing number of other disciplines at Warwick for research workshops, seminars, and more. As we grow, we hope to become a space that the whole University can benefit from, highlighting our world-class teaching and research, while also growing our international collaborations.

Marco Polo International Programme Shortlisted for THE International Collaboration of the Year

In 2024, the year marking the 700th anniversary of the death of one of the world’s great explorers, Marco Polo, the University of Warwick was proud to partner with 36 global institutions to launch the Marco Polo International Programme. The programme was one of six to be shortlisted by Times Higher Education for the International Collaboration of the Year Award in 2025, underlining our commitment to innovative, sector-leading international collaboration.

Global citizenship

Since its inception, Warwick has always been an outward-looking and global university; we continue to build strong partnerships both internationally and within Europe to boost learning, research and provide opportunities for our students and staff. Our International Strategy and Relationship Team nurture strategic relationships across Africa, Australia, China, Europe, North America and beyond.

We are proud to be a member of the EUTOPIA alliance, delivering open, innovative, and inclusive higher education in Europe. The mission of EUTOPIA is to build a unique and daring alliance of transformative and engaged institutions. Warwick remains at its heart, and we are ready to reinvent ourselves to build the European university of the future.

We already work closely with Ca’ Foscari University, one of the EUTOPIA partners, and we hope that our centre will help us to further strengthen our education and research work with them.