Welcome to the Venice Ophthalmology Summer School
Don Orione Artigianelli Cultural Center, Venice (Italy)
July, 16th - 22nd 2023
VOSS is an ambitious cultural project dedicated to young ophthalmologists from all over Europe. It was established in 2013 and now it is resurrecting (as the Arab phoenix) after the pandemia. This School confirms to be a great opportunity for young ophthalmologists and Faculty members to meet together, to exchange hypothesis, theories and experience, in an unusual and stimulating location. The harmonization of education in Ophthalmology needs direct daily contact between trainees and teachers to share their previous experiences and to create a network for future cultural opportunities. The Venice Ophthalmology Summer School offers such an experience and new opportunities to young and motivated ophthalmologists.
The VOSS venue is the Don Orione Artigianelli Center, originally a medieval monastery, located in downtown Venice. Both faculty members and attendees are accommodated and have the full event (July 16 – 22, 2023) in this Center. The choice of Venice is to have VOSS in one of the most multicultural, multiethnic and multireligious cities of the world. A place where languages, cultures and religions meet since more than 1000 years.
VOSS is a cultural project under the patronage of both the Department of Neuroscience of the University of Padova and the Bietti Foundation (Roma).
Welcome to Venice to all VOSS Faculty members and attendees!
Edoardo Midena
VOSS Organizer
Venice, July 2023
Venice Ophthalmology Summer School 2023 is dedicated to our friend Jerry
.
Gerard (Jerry) Anthony Lutty
(1947-2021)
“I greatly appreciate your wonderful friendship through the years and Edoardo, who brought us together in amazing Venice for a wonderful course.
Peace and love”
Jerry
March 18, 2021
Don Orione Artigianelli Cultural Center
In 2023 the Venice Ophthalmology Summer School will take place in the atmosphere of a more historical Venice, in a prestigious location currently known as “Don Orione Artigianelli Center”, next to the Accademia Bridge and the Gallerie dell’Accademia, with direct overview on Giudecca Canal (the Zattere quayside). In fact, the present name refers only to the history closest to us, from the early twentieth century.
But the monumental complex, as always in Venice, has much more ancient origins and, as often happens, religious ones. A religious order called the Gesuati, (because often repeating the name of Jesus) dedicated to the care of the sick and religious preaching, is present in Venice since the middle of 1400 and they promoted the building of the little church of St. Mary of the Visitation (1494, firstly church, then the library of the largest and neighboring Dominican church of Santa Maria dei Gesuati and now privately owned) with the adjoining monastery. The church is the first example of Renaissance building in Venice.
In 1669, the monastery and church were purchased by the Dominican order, a major order of Friars Preachers, who erected the new church of “Santa Maria del Rosario” (or Gesuati, 1724-1736) and began the extension of the monastery, as we see it today, under the direction of the architect Giorgio Massari. A clear and prestigious example of Baroque art in Venice.
Inside this church are still present some masterpiecess painted by the greatest Venetian artists of the eighteenth century, as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Sebastiano Ricci and Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.
From 1815 to 1867, after the suppression of all religious orders ordered by Napoleon Bonaparte, the building was managed by the Municipality of Venice as an orphanage.Nel 1923, Luigi Orione (a catholic priest, later Saint Luigi Orione; founder of the “Little Work of Divine Providence”) who dedicated his life to the care and education of the poor, bought the church and the whole area and dedicated it to the education of young orphans to different craft specialties (young artisans, hence the name “artigianelli”). In the 80s of the twentieth century the Don Orione order ceased the education of orphans, and the building was used as a boarding school for young university students. Since the beginning of the XXI century, the center is a hospitality and cultural building in the center of the monumental Venice.