The Museum of Sea Art and Traditional Boats

It consists of two parts. The “active” part is represented by the fleet of traditional boats. After being saved from fire or obsolescence, historical fishing boats, varche and schifareddhi, have been carefully restored and returned to the sea and navigation.

They are moored in a dedicated space, offering a striking and colorful vision to all visitors who stroll along the quays, and are also available, during the educational paths specially programmed by the School of Ancient Seafaring, to those who would live the thrilling experience of traditional sailing.

During the winter season, boats find shelter in the Museum shipyard, where a team of craftsmen, with their antique art, perform the necessary maintenance of the hulls, masts, lateen yards and sails.

The “static” part is a welcoming house-museum which predisposes to a charming, educational, recreational and socializing experience, thanks to the direct contact with objects, tools and testimonies of the Mediterranean culture that it contains and offers, in a sublime combination of history and modernity, antique items and modern technologies. 

It is the flagship of the fleet of the Museum of Traditional Boats and the first emblem of the Port-Museum of Tricase of which it bears the ancient name. Its story is of a great symbolic importance: its journey ended in Tricase Porto in May 2002, when 98 Kurdish Iraqi refugees, fleeing from their own country, landed in Italy.

It is a type of ship spread throughout the Aegean area, known in Greece as Trechandìri and in Turkey as Tirhandil. Its shapes, simple and linear, meet a constructive model handed down for centuries by the carpenters of the Aegean area. About 100 years old, it is a unique example, being armed with two masts and two lateen sails, plus a series of jibs, according to the oldest tradition.

The ship Portus Veneris is a travelling museum, a venue for cultural and institutional events , a training ship where to learn and practice the traditional maneuvers; it is the sailing soil of the Town of Tricase, owner of the ship, a symbol of the historical link with other peoples of the Mediterranean.