Built in 1453 in the Dorsodoro section of Venice, the Palazzo Filomela was named after the musician Filamena Ziani, who resided at the Palazzo from 1543 until her death in 1567. Today, the Museum is better known as the Museum of Love, a title inspired by a mysterious romance from Ziani's youth.

Filamena Ziani was nicknamed by the public as La Filomela— "the nightingale"—in honor of her gift of song. She also authored La Via dell' Amante (The Lover’s Path). Besides writing The Lover's Path, Ziani was also responsible for commissioning the Palazzo's most noted attribute, the La Via dell' Amante fresco series. Located in the Palazzo's main hall, these seven paintings depict mythic and legendary lovers. Perhaps because of these as well as the history of its most famed inhabitant, the Museum has become a favorite place for those who seek to understand love's ways.

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The Museum came into formal existence during the Victorian era, when the interest in "cabinets of curiosities " led many travelers to the Palazzo Filomela. John Ruskin visited the Palazzo Filomela during an extended stay in Venice, while writing The Stones of Venice. The composer Richard Wagner, who lived in the nearby Palazzi Giustinian as he worked on the second act of Tristan and Isolde, was intrigued by Ziani’s invocation of that story in The Lover’s Path.

In recent years, the Museum has begun to make its art and archives available to the popular public through creative measures. The Museum published the first English translation of The Lover’s Path in 2006. It also reproduced a tarot set believed to have been owned by Tullia Ziani, the courtesan sister of Filamena, along with other romantic gifts for those who would follow their hearts.