History of Venice

This history relates to the city-even of Venice .

The history of Venice rests on a paradox: how some small islands of the North-West of the Adriatic , encircled by the mud, gave rise to the capital of a maritime and commercial empire and to the largest port of the Moyen-âge? As from the 16th century, the city enters a political and economic decline but knows a very strong cultural radiation. In 1797, Bonaparte puts an end to its independence. The city joined then the Royaume of Italy in 1866. The attraction of Venice continues still today: many are the tourists charmed by the originality of the site and the richness of its monuments, products of a prestigious history.

Progressive formation of the city (5th century-9th century)

Venetian historiography turns to the myth when the first centuries of his history are approached. Traditionally, it is told that the city precisely founded into 421 by three Consul S had come from Padoue. The invasion of the Italy by the Huns of Attila would have caused the installation of refugees on the small islands of the lagoon, in particular on the Rialto. To the 7th century, the Venetian ones would have entrusted the capacity to a doge. It proves that these some historical stakes are false or caricatural. It does not remain about it less than Venice is “a fact of exceptional urbanization”

A Roman occupation

The archaeological excavations revealed that the islands and the offshore bar of the Lagune were already occupied by the men at the time of the Roman Empire. They were especially fishermen exploiting the saltworks and alive in hamlets. Since 1995-2000, the discoveries on sites now immersed reveal the strong density of settlement in certain zones. The vestiges of the Roman epoch are under one or two meters of water. Hydrographic upheavals and the marine invasion caused floods and obliged the population to evacuate the majority of the small islands in Ve and 6th century. Result, when a civil servant of the Royaume ostrogoth Cassiodore describes into 537-538 the lagoon, it offered a landscape of reeds and vase, where some fishermen carried out a scanty and skimped life.

The massive exodus towards the lagoon

Coupled to a stabilization then a fall of the sea level, the invasion of the Huns then Ostrogoth S in Italy brought the first refugees on the lagoon. But it was especially the arrival of the Lombard S in the area of Vicence, Vérone, Trévise and Padoue towards 568 which started a massive migration towards the littoral and its small islands. The Roman population fled in front of the invader, sometimes in disorder, sometimes behind their clergy and their chiefs.

the inhabitants of Oderzo, city taken by Rotaric into 639, based on the offshore bar Civitas Novas
the small island of Torcello was populated refugees of Altino, guided by their bishop.
Malamocco accepted Padouans
In Grado, settled inhabitants of Aquilée.

In short, “the establishment initially diffuse, was scattered in a great number of small agglomerations, each community being fixed at share, isolated from the others”. Certain habitats were precarious, others appeared anchored better, as with Torcello. This population resulting from the dry land found in the lagoon a double protection, that of the marshy medium that the horses of the Barbarians could not reach and that of the Byzantines who tried to cling on the Italian littoral.

The ambient insecurity preventing the return of the refugees, the latter were constrained to constitute a new city on the lagoon. Alteration work was undertaken: one consolidated banks, one drained the grounds, one built houses out of wooden and stone or brick monuments. The materials were sought on the dry land. Quickly, rose small cities and churches like the basilica of the Virgin with Torcello in 639. Of agricultural (fishing, vines, arboriculture, salt), the economy diversified as of the 7th century towards the craft industry (work of glass, the horn, then bronze) and the trade.

The incipient city was posed in intermediary commercial between the Occident and the Byzantine Empire. By it, more exactly by Torcello, forwarded the products of the East (silk trade of luxury, spices, noble metals) and those of Western Europe (salt, wood, slaves).

Emergence of a center: Rialto

At the 8th century, Venice formed a multipolar agglomeration. Each one on their small islands or their tape of sand, Torcello, the large commercial counter, Cittanova and Malamocco, where the political power resided, Rialto constituted the principal centers of the lagoon. Little by little, the men, the richnesses, the activities tended to concentrate in Rialto, the island with the cœor of the watery enclave. Among its advantages, she proposed an easy accosting for the boats with large draft (Rialto comes from “Rivo Altus”, the high bank). The maritime trade was some facilitated. On the contrary, because of a modification of the course of the rivers which are thrown to the north of the lagoon, Dese, Sile, the other islands knew a sedimentation which blocked navigation. The preeminence of Rialto was reinforced into 810 by the installation of the chief of Venice, the doge Angelo Participazio. It was thus gradually that Rialto became the center of Venice.

Emancipation of Byzance

The chronicle of Giacomo Diacono, chronicler of the 11th century, tells that at the 7th century, the Venetian ones élirent a doge to control them. The historian Donald Mr. Nicol showed that this fact concerns the myth. In fact, the doge was not a Venetian elected official by his compatriots but a Byzantine magistrate, the Exarque of Ravenne, from which the capacity extended to Venice.

After the disappearance of the Empire Romain d' Occident in 476, the Byzantines ensured the defense of Italy against the Barbarians. But during the Early middle ages, they held more and more with difficulty their points of anchoring. Lombards drove out them Ravenne. Threatened by other enemies, Byzance was based more and more on the richness and the increasing naval power of Venice. Of a statute of subjection compared to the Byzantines, the city lagunaire slipped towards a position of allied. At the 11th century, it ends up organizing naval forwardings on behalf of the Byzantines. In reward of the military victories, the Venetian merchants obtained commercial privileges. The tender with Byzance proved to be theoretical.

In 810, the city resisted Charlemagne, emperor but also king of Lombards.

A fact marked the emancipation of Venice with regard to Byzance: in 828, holy Marc whose relics have just been brought back supposedly Alexandria by two sailors replaced Theodore like owner of the city. In other words, a Latin saint replaced a Greek saint.

The medieval city (9th century-1500)

A city in building site

The big business instigated the agglomeration which knew consequently a strong demographic expansion. It was thus necessary to conquer on the lagoon. The Venetian ones brought ground, they drained the ground, inserted thousands of piles to be used as foundations with the buildings. A canal system took shape around the main thing of them: the Channel Large . Jean-Claude Hocquet evaluates that 80% or 90% of current Venice are perhaps gained on water. One thus includes/understands the expression of Pétrarque at the 14th century: a “very miraculous city”.

Until the end of the 11th century, Venice was a town of wood except the palate of the duke and some churches, but of the devastating fires obliged to re-examine construction materials. The brick carried it then while the stone of Istrie which resists salt water, occupied the low parts. The city was composed of an about sixty parishes gathered since 1169 in six districts or sestieri symbolized by the six teeth which the prow of the gondoles carries (San Marco, Cannaregio, Castello, Dorsoduro, San Polo, San Croce)

The municipality intervened by payments to frame the urban evolution, up to that point anarchistic. Alignments of frontage were to be respected. In 1224, an organism in charge to maintain the channels was created. One also undertook to improve the small island of Giudecca nuova .

The capital of a maritime empire

In second half of XIIIe century, Venice, with approximately 100.000 inhabitants, appeared with Paris, Milan, Florence, Genoa and Ghent among more the big cities of Western Europe. It was with the head of a State, certainly of small size but independent: the Republic of Venice. Its chief, the doge, was in fact a Duc.

At the 14th century, it and Genoa reigned on the trade of the the Mediterranean. A position which the first had in particular acquired by taking an active share with the IV {{E}} Croisade (1202-1204). It had ensured the sea transport of the Crusaders, had conquered thanks to their military aid of multiples Comptoir S on the road of the East (Zara, Corfou…) and finally had taken part in the plundering of Byzance. The four gilded horses which decorate today the basilica Saint-Marc come from the brought back spoils of old Constantinople.

The naval power of Venetian rested in particular on its galère S. In 1325, began work from enlarging of the Arsenal from which these boats left.

From the 13th century, the banks of the Canal Large became populated beautiful residences, the put the notable ones. Commines, the adviser of the king de France Louis XI remained admiring in this spectacle. For him, Venice “triumphing is quoted the most that I ever saw” and the Canal Large “the most beautiful street that I croy which is in everyone and best reasoned”.

The cultural capital: second life of Venice (1500-1797)

The displacement of the trade flows, the marginalisation of the the Mediterranean involved the political and economic decline city of the doges. If the Arsenal always filled with wonder the spectators with its 2000 workmen and workers and her integrated system of production, Sérénissime was not any more the center of the world. The patricians were diverted maritime trade and constituted great agricultural properties on the Dry land. Result, Venice sheltered from now on an aristocracy of shareholders.

Declining economically, the city appeared on the contrary “alive, healthy, brilliant in the field of the spirit, still triumphing and still go of Europe”. She knew a favoured cultural boiling by the artistic orders of the patricians families and the religious brotherhoods. Famous artists were born to with it or settled there. Painting was represented by Titien (1485-1576), the dynasty of the Bellini, Tintoret and Véronèse (born with Vérone but established in Venice in 1556) then later Canaletto died in 1768, Tiepolo, Longhi, Guardi. The architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), originating in Padoue but installed in Venice, designed several residences in the Renaissance style. The dynamism touched also the music with figures such as Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Vivaldi and the literature with Apostolo Zeno, Goldoni, the Gozzi brothers.

In parallel, Venice was dazed in the festival. There was of course the carnival which lasted six months of the year. In fact, all was pretext with festivities: theater, concerts, public festivals, festivals of patron saint, birthdays, baptisms or marriages, reception from famous abroad. The Fête of Sensa during which the doge married the sea symbolically marked especially the visitors. Venice inaugurated the first public theaters of opera.

A census counts 149.500 Venetian in 1760.

Venice contemporary (1797 with today)

The catch of Venice by Bonaparte, at the end of the countryside of Italy, represented the political obliteration of Venice. It was the end of independence. The French carried the table of Véronèse, the Wedding at Cana , as well as the quadriga of bronze horses. The Venezia passed shortly after under Austrian occupation. A domination stopped between 1806 and 1814 by a new installation of the French. The Austrians were maintained in the lagoon until 1866, date of the fastening of Venice to the young person Royaume of Italy. The Venetian ones voted this annexation.

Venice lost also its insularity: between 1841 and 1846, a railway bridge was built until Rialto then a road link.

In second half of the 20th century, the Venetian ones became aware of the dramatic evolution of their city. Atmospheric pollution attacked the worthy monuments. Watery pollution threatened fauna. For much, the lagoon was considered died. Concern increased by the fear of the rise of water. In 1966, Venice indeed undergoes a large flood which alerted the authorities. In 1975, one closed the stations which pumped the water of the ground water in order to slow down the subsidence. The purpose of the Project Mose, definitively proposed in 1989, is to counter the invasion of the lagoon by the exceptional tides. But its gigantism and its cost frighten certain Venetian and the conservationists. Result, the project is not completed yet.

Moored for fifteen centuries in the vases of its lagoon safe from a frèle offshore bar, the fabulous Venetian city has staggered under the effect of the tides of the Adriatique and the poisons of industrial pollution… Overpowered years and evils, palate and tourists, this old " republic sérénissime" dedicated formerly to Holy Marc the Evangelist, is today in the search of an improbable safety.

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