Header: Courtesy of LEGO Group
The new LEGO Icons Venetian Neighbourhood (11388) is a 5,682-piece model of a street along a Venetian canal, lined with a villa, a glassblowing workshop and an astronomical clock tower. Once built, it measures 48 cm high, 63 cm wide and 31 cm deep, with LEGO having revealed that it is the first city scene of this scale made as a display model.
“Set along a bustling, brick-built waterfront, this set recreates a canal-side neighbourhood embodying the true spirit of the floating city.”
LEGO Group
The clock tower and the canal
The clock tower can be reached by crossing the arched bridge over the canal. Its clock shows the phases of the moon and the signs of the zodiac, and it moves when a knob on the tower’s side is turned. Inside, players can find the clock mechanism and a telescope, plus a ticket machine at the ground-floor entrance.
On the wall above is a winged lion based on the Lion of Saint Mark, the symbol of Venice. The clock is a reference to St Mark’s Clocktower, the Torre dell’Orologio, which has been on the north side of Piazza San Marco since the 1st of February of 1499.
A gondola carrying one passenger can be moved along the canal and under the arched bridge. The street, full of life, has an olive tree and a street piano, which plays a melody when the vase of flowers on top of it is turned.
The villa and the glass workshop
LEGO calls the villa the centrepiece of the set, standing almost as tall as the clocktower and just as magical. Its ground floor was made into a shop selling glassware, and a staircase leads up to an apartment with a chandelier, a minifigure raising a martini glass and a slice of a coffee-flavoured local speciality on the table.
A bell tower is attached to the villa at the left edge of the set, and at its base a glassblower minifigure works in a small glassblowing workshop. The workshop refers to the famous Murano glass, which was born when, in 1291, the Venetian Republic ordered all of the city’s glassmakers to move their furnaces to the island of Murano, as it feared a fire would destroy Venice’s mostly wooden buildings.
The minifigures
The 17 minifigures include gondoliers, tourists, musicians and two Carnival-goers, and the set also comes with two pigeons. Two glassblowers work in the workshop and in the villa’s shop, a figure raises a martini glass in the apartment upstairs (as mentioned), and a violinist stands in, according to LEGO, as a tribute to one of Venice’s most celebrated musicians.
The Carnival-goers are dressed as the Moon and the Sun, a classic Venetian masquerade pairing. The Moon wears a dark blue tricorn hat, a blue cloak and a beaked plague doctor’s mask, and carries a gold lantern, while the Sun wears a golden cloak, a crown-like headpiece and a mask made from a printed video game controller turned upside down.
Two sections and open rooms
The model is built on two bases that can be pulled apart and rearranged, giving buyers total freedom to display the set in whichever way they prefer. The street can be displayed in one piece, joined by the bridge, or as two separate scenes. The floors and roofs of the buildings also lift off, so the rooms inside can still be seen once the set is finished.
