Today we have travel photos from a recent trip to Venice by Athayde Tonhasca Júnior. This is the first of a two-part series; Athayde’s commentary is indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
The likes of Google, Amazon, Telsa or their forebears such as the East Indian Company epitomise hardcore capitalism, behemoths with the unwavering goal of maximising profit. But these modern and past corporations are dabblers when measured up against La Serenissima, or ‘The most serene’ Venetian Republic.
When waves of invading Germanic tribes started to pull the Roman Empire apart, some sensible citizens decided to make themselves scarce. They found safety in the marshy islands of the Venetian lagoon, places that are difficult to reach, easy to defend and not particularly coveted by Teutonic barbarians.
Starting with a scattering of fishermen’s huts, Venice expanded into a magnificent city built on oak and larch poles sunk in the lagoon. These foundations of houses, palaces and churches have lasted for over a thousand years thanks to a fortuitous combination: the lagoon’s oxygen-starved waters curtail decomposition, and the high concentration of silt petrified the poles. You can say that Venice is a city on stilts.
From the salt trade, the City-state of Venice diversified and grew by selling Slavic captives (if you ever wondered where the word ‘slave’ came from. . . ), silk, glass and, by far the most profitable commodities, spices. Aided by a powerful navy, by the year 1000 Venice came to dominate Mediterranean trade from Asia and Africa to Europe, gobbling up big chunks of territory along the way. You will find the lion of St. Mark, Venice’s symbol of power, decorating buildings and monuments all over Cyprus, Crete, and the Balkan states.
The Republic of Venice was nominally ruled by a Doge (from the Latin dux), but the real authority emanated from the richest merchants and aristocrats who formed the city’s parliament, or the Great Council of Venice. In any case, the Doge was a symbol of Venice’s might, so pomp and circumstance were a must. No gondola was dignified enough for His Serenity during the Ascension Day festivities, so he would go out sitting pretty on the stern of a flamboyant gilded barge known as bucintoro (bucentaur). This 1828 model in the Naval Museum depicts the last bucentaur, which was 35 m long and propelled by 42 oars, each manned by four men. In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte, the vengeful warmonger, ordered the bucentaur to be set alight so that French soldiers could recover the gold.
Venice become the richest city in Europe, and its fabulously wealthy merchants were equivalent to today’s Russian oligarchs. Except they had good taste and patronised the arts and science. This is the ceiling of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, a museum of cringe-making medical instruments and books written by the likes of Galen and Hippocrates. Almost no tourists in sight.
One of the Scuola Grande‘s treasures: Historia Plantarum, also known as the Tacuinum Sanitatis, a natural history encyclopaedia. This famous codex, dating back to the fourteenth century, contains illustrations of plants and animals with curative properties.
Venice overwhelms the visual senses: everywhere you look is covered by painstakingly created details. Each column surrounding the Palazzo Ducale (the Doge’s palace) is uniquely carved; no mass-produced mouldings here.
Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco (St Mark’s Basilica).
If you want to explore Venice at a leisurely rhythm and in peace, the time to visit is never. The second best time is during the winter (avoiding the Carnaval), when the crowds thin down from the suffocating mob levels of summer and festivals. And by getting going early in the morning and avoiding guidebooks’ ‘must sees’, there are many lovely discoveries awaiting in the city’s labyrinthine alleys and dead ends. You will get lost, though. Guaranteed.
Gorgeous
A delightful trip through history.
Always a special treat! Thank you, Mr. Tonhasca!
Wonderful. You’ve made me want to visit Venice so much that it’s almost painful.
Great shots!
Thank you.
Fantastic trip through history and through Venice. Gotta love the gilded gondola. That’s conspicuous consumption!
And for gustatory pleasure in Venice, seek out the little rolls with green olives in them. They don’t sound like much, but they are!! They pair/wash down nicely with Soave, which conveniently is one of the wines of the region.
I’ve been to Venice three times (briefly each time). The first two trips were before smart phones, and yes, we got lost. The third trip was with a smart phone with a GPS, which made it easy enough to always find your way. Still a great city to visit.
Thank you Mr Athayde Tonhasca. I like your pictures.
I visited Venice a long time ago before the maddening mobs and it was very interesting however I worked for a time at Forli (Capital IL Duce) this close to the small town where Mussolini was born and I much preferred Florence and the surrounding countryside, Rimini and Ravenna on the Adriatic are close and there are many lovely towns to explore.
Nice photos and commentary! Venice does have its historical and artistic charms, but like many coastal cities in the world, it seems doomed by global warming and the resulting rising seas.
Sorry to say, it’s hard for me to imagine engineering efforts grand enough to either raise the city or create massive enough sea walls that could keep the waters from flooding it before the twenty-second century. I hope I’m wrong.
More likely, it seems to me, would be an effort to send miniature insect-like drones to every corner, nook, and crevice of the city to scan it for reproduction in a grand virtual reality simulation.
I know this might seem very artificial and a pale substitute for the real thing, but I expect virtual reality to eventually be quite rich and convincing — and certainly better than losing Venice entirely to the rising seas.
Thanks, nice little tour, particularly liked the last shot…
the post reminded me of a RNZ radio report on opera. Venice has a very rich history in Opera. According to Wiki it “was often called the Republic of Music” The theaters themselves played out as a meeting place for the powerful of the day.
I’m no opera fan by any means but it was very interesting. IIRC so not sure, some opera performed in the city had political commentary, protest elements, operatic rock in the 1600!
Thanks for the fantastic history lesson of Venice and all the wonderful photos and commentary. I visited Venice in the early 2000’s and had a blast. The crowds didn’t bother me. My brother and I got lost a few times, but we did stumble upon a bar where Hemingway frequented and had a couple cocktails (very good and very expensive). The artwork and architecture is almost overwhelming; thanks for reminding me of the beauty and grandeur of Venice.
Wait wait! Jerry, please consider Sicily! It has everything you want. Hire a car and driver if you dont want to drive. Food, nature, architecture…..perfect for a month vacation! We lived in Rome for two years but sadly never got to Sicily. Big mistake.And you could fly into Naples and drive down south to get the ferry to Sicily, stopping at Pompeii and Amalfi drive on the way. Lovely!
The East India Company was not capitalist. It was mercantilist.