Venice

Abstract

No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, “another world.” During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was celebrated as a model republic in an age of monarchs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became famous for its freewheeling lifestyle characterized by courtesans, casinos, and Carnival. When the city fell on hard times following the collapse of the Republic in 1797, a darker vision of Venice as a place of decay, disease, and death took hold. Today tourists from around the globe flock to the world heritage site as rising sea level threatens its very foundations. This comprehensive account reveals the adaptations to its geographic setting that have been a constant feature of living on water from Venice’s origins to the present. It examines the lives of the women and men, noble and common, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, who built the city and its vast empire that stretched from Northern Italy to the eastern Mediterranean. It details Venice’s urban transformations in response to environmental vulnerability, industrialization, and mass tourism. It also considers the city’s dramatically changing political role—its power as a city-state, regional-state, and overseas empire, and its impact on the development of fascism. Throughout, the city’s cultural achievements in architecture, painting, and music are highlighted.