The Beauty Of Venice, Italy

Venice

Italy

Venice, Italian Venezia, city, major seaport, and capital of both the provincia (province) of Venezia and the regione (region) of Veneto, northern Italy. An island city, it was once the centre of a maritime republic. It was the greatest seaport in late medieval Europe and the continent’s commercial and cultural link to Asia. Venice is unique environmentally, architecturally, and historically, and in its days as a republic the city was styled la serenissima (“the most serene” or “sublime”). 

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It remains a major Italian port in the northern Adriatic Sea and is one of the world’s oldest tourist and cultural centres.

Since the fall of the Venetian republic in 1797, the city has held an unrivaled place in the Western imagination and has been endlessly described in prose and verse. The luminous spectacle of ornate marbled and frescoed palaces, bell towers, and domes reflected in the sparkling waters of the lagoon under a blue Adriatic sky has been painted, photographed, and filmed to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish the real city from its romantic representations. The visitor arriving in Venice is still transported into another world, one whose atmosphere and beauty remain incomparable.

Today Venice is recognized as part of the artistic and architectural patrimony of all humanity, a fitting role for a city whose thousand-year economic and political independence was sustained by its role in global trading. The situation of the city on islands has limited modern suburban spread beyond the historic centre; its framework of canals and narrow streets has prevented the intrusion of automobiles; and its unmatched wealth of fine buildings and monuments dating from the period of commercial dominance has ensured a keen and almost universal desire for sensitive conservation. This concern for conservation is now extended not just to the city’s monuments but to the very city itself, as rising water levels and subsidence of the land upon which Venice is built threaten the continued existence of the city in its present form. In 1987 Venice and its lagoon were collectively designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. Pop. (2009 est.) city, 59,984; (2011 est.) comune, 270,884.

Physical And Human Geography

The landscape

Site

Situated at the northwestern end of the Adriatic Sea, Venice lies on an archipelago in the crescent-shaped Laguna Veneta (Venice Lagoon), which stretches some 32 miles (51 km) from the reclaimed marshes of Jesolo in the north to the drained lands beyond Chioggia at the southern end. The shallow waters of the lagoon are protected by a line of sandbanks, or lidi, whose three gaps, or porti, allow passage of the 3-foot (1-metre) tides and the city’s maritime traffic. On the sandbanks are many small settlements, some of them centuries old. The best-known is the Lido itself, which has been a fashionable seaside resort since the 19th century.

Terraferma

Although Venice may aptly be regarded as an isolated sea city, it has always had close links with the surrounding marshlands and the mainland of northern Italy. The Venetian republic included the perimeter of the lagoon, the dogado, within its territory. In addition, from the early 15th century it amassed a large land empire known as terraferma (“dry land”), stretching from the Istrian Peninsula in the east to the borders of Milan in the west and from the Po River in the south to the high Alps in the north. From the 16th century onward, the Venetians invested heavily in the purchase, reclamation, and drainage of terraferma lands. The imprint of the republic may still be seen in former subject cities, such as Padua, Verona, and Vicenza, where Venetian Gothic palaces line the streets and the symbol of Venice, the lion of San Marco, stands over the city squares.

Today the administrative city, or comune, of Venice embraces the 90-mile (145-km) perimeter of the lagoon, taking in the urban and industrial areas of Mestre and Marghera and the Marco Polo International Airport at Tessera. The proportion of the population of the comune that lives in Venice itself has shrunk steadily. At the beginning of the 20th century the historic city centre contained three-fourths of the comune’s population, and at mid-century it still contained more than half. By the beginning of the 21st century that fraction had shrunk to less than one-fourth.

Lagoon and tides

Originally formed by the interaction of Adriatic tidal currents and the waters of several Alpine rivers (Piave, Sile, Bacchiglione, and Brenta), the lagoon has always been crucial to the survival of Venice. Its mud banks, shallows, and channels are a source of income from marine and bird life and from salt pans. The lagoon has served as protection (the Venetians defeated the Genoese in 1380 through their superior knowledge of the navigable channels) and as a natural sewerage system, with the tides flushing out the city’s canals twice daily.

But the lagoon requires careful husbandry to prevent it from threatening the very existence of Venice. The deepening of channels in the 20th century, the overextraction of fresh water from mainland aquifers, the rising of the Adriatic Sea, and the geologic sinking of the Po River basin have all combined to lower the land level, creating a serious flooding problem. On a regular basis, when high tides combine with winds from the south and east, the waters of the lagoon rise and flood the city, creating the acqua alta (“high water”) so familiar to Venetians, and elaborate raised platforms are laid out in main squares to allow tourists and others to walk around the city. A particularly severe inundation struck in 1966, prompting a series of national and even international efforts to study the problem and propose solutions. A scheme to build a mechanical barrage that could be raised in times of flooding to close the lagoon was initiated in 1988, when engineers began testing a prototype. However, progress has been hampered by overlapping local, regional, and national bureaucratic concerns, as well as worries over the effects of ambitious engineering schemes on the ecological balance of the lagoon. Venice has its own city council with ultimate responsibility for the daily life of the city, but a regional authority administers the Veneto area, which has hydrographic and industrial concerns that bear heavily on the problems of the lagoon and city. Moreover, ministries of the national government have a direct stake in museums and galleries, in port activities, and in historic buildings. Finally, many of the great industries are nationalized or partly owned by the state, including the railways, the airport, and what remains of the oil and chemical industries located in Marghera. Such concurrent jurisdictions and conflicts of interest have produced administrative stalemate, and, as a result of this inaction, Venice is still vulnerable to floods and could even see a repetition of the disaster of 1966.

Climate

Most visitors experience Venice in summer, when average daytime temperatures are in the mid-70s to low 80s F (about 24 to 27 °C), with a haze caused by high humidity frequently obscuring the view of the Alps across the lagoon. Spring and autumn bring clear, bright light, especially when winds are northerly, giving relief from the exhausting heat of the southerly sirocco. In January the mean average temperature is mid-30s F (2.2 °C), and wintertime Venice is dulled and chilled by mists, lending the city an especially mysterious appearance. Annual rainfall averages about 34 inches (865 mm), of which more than 7 inches (185 mm) falls in October and November and about 6.5 inches (170 mm) in May and June.

Settlement in the lagoon predates Roman times, but the present urban structure took shape in the early 7th century, when migrants from the mainland swelled existing fishing communities on the higher mudflats and sandbanks. Among these early settlements, Rivo Alto, its name corrupted over time to Rialto, was the most central and became the heart of Venice, linking together 118 separate islands with bridges and canals and subordinating all other settlements to the rule of its elected doge (duke). In all these lagoonal settlements the characteristic plan, still detectable in the street patterns, was dominated by a navigable channel from which side channels branched at intervals.

More than 200 original canals have been linked together to form a dense urban network on either side of the curving Grand Canal, which describes a great backward S more than two miles long, from the railway station to San Marco Basin in front of the Doges’ Palace. Its width varies from about 100 to 225 feet (30 to 70 metres), and it is lined by buildings that once were the palaces of great merchant families and the public warehouses, or fondaci, used in foreign trade.

The original pattern of separate islands surrounding the Rialto is evident in the parishes of Venice. In many respects they remain distinct communities, with life centred on the square, or campo (site of the community well), and its parish church. Perhaps the most clearly recognizable such area today is the Ghetto, the islet on which from 1516 to 1797 Venice’s Jews were confined. (Indeed, the very word ghetto was first used with reference to Venice.) The Ghetto is located in the northwestern part of the city and is surrounded by canals whose bridges were once raised and guarded at night. Because this was the only area in which Jews could live in Venice, houses are densely packed and rise to seven stories; alleyways are almost too narrow for two people to pass.

Many parishes had their own minor guild or fraternity, and at festivals their representatives competed with one another to provide floats or oarsmen, a ritualized rivalry encouraged by the ruling patricians to promote civic stability. Over time the patchwork of local streets, canals, and quays has been modified to improve the overall structure of the city. Quayside paths have been widened to form canalside walkways, or fondamente, canals have been filled in (rio terà), and streets have been joined by passages under the houses. (For the visitor, trying to find an address in Venice is not made any easier by the practice of numbering houses consecutively through a whole district rather than along each street.)

Canal boats and bridges

The best-known form of transport on the waterways of Venice is the gondola. Today there are only several hundred of these unique, keelless boats left, and they have long been outnumbered by other vessels. But their elegant, sleek shape and gleaming black paintwork have made them a symbol of Venice. Many writers have described the romance of Venice by gondola, and many tourists are still willing to pay high prices to be rowed at twilight through the canals to the singing of a gondolier. But it is many years since gondoliers could recite verses from such Italian poets as Ariosto or Tasso while maneuvering their amazingly flexible craft around the sharp bends of the minor canals. A number of gondolas still serve as ferries across the Grand Canal, but the cost of maintenance makes their ultimate disappearance likely.

The canals are filled with a variety of motor-powered boats. They range from the vaporetti, public water buses run by the municipal transport system, to the private motor-launch taxis. Other specialized craft, such as the barges carrying fruits and vegetables, the garbage barges, ambulance and police launches, and the boats filled with tourists’ baggage, make up a water scene of endless colour and variety.

Venice is a walking city. Other than at the great parking lots at Rome Square and on the Lido, automobiles are banned from the city. At the risk of encountering frequent detours and dead ends, one can reach any point in Venice by foot—along the banks of the canals, on the paved streets, through the neighbourhood squares, and over the 400 or so canal bridges (ponti). Many of the traditional arched marble bridges remain, but large numbers of old bridges were replaced by wrought iron structures in the 19th century.

The Grand Canal is spanned by four bridges. At its most dramatic bend is the famous Rialto Bridge, designed by the aptly named Antonio da Ponte (c. 1590). The other three bridges are of more recent origin. Accademia Bridge, a high-arched wooden structure with a temporary look, was built in the 1930s to replace a 19th-century bridge constructed by the Austrians and has withstood foot traffic by being reinforced with steel. The Scalzi Bridge, at the railway station, was built of marble in 1932. The newest of the Grand Canal’s bridges is the Constitution Bridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava and opened in 2008. It connects the railway station to Rome Square.

Palaces

The houses (case, or, in Venetian, ca’) that line the streets and canals of the city range from the poorest blocks to the great palaces (palazzi). Ordinary houses generally rise three or four stories. They originally had external staircases and were grouped around a communal courtyard and well. Their simple rectangular doorways and window lights may be framed in unpolished marble; otherwise they are unornamented, their red brick or ochre-painted stucco walls giving a comfortable warmth to the townscape. But it is the palaces, not the ordinary dwellings, that front directly onto the larger canals, particularly the Grand Canal, with gaudily painted mooring posts marking their water entrances.

Although architectural styles changed over time, the structure of these merchants’ buildings remained fairly constant. The water story served as the merchant’s offices and storerooms, while the floor above was occupied by the patrician family. This piano nobile has its principal room, or salone, overlooking the canal; it is lit by a central window group of five or six lights and, characteristically, two single lateral windows. This tripartite fenestration reflects the internal arrangement of rooms running back from the canal to a courtyard at the rear, which frequently contains gardens and greenery. Walls are often of brick faced with dressed stone. The most characteristic building stone is the brilliant white marble shipped cheaply into Venice from Istrian quarries. It is easy to carve but remarkably resistant to weathering, which is severe in the humid, saline—and now acidic—air of Venice.

The facades of the palaces evolved stylistically from their original Byzantine form, characterized by tall, narrow arches—those of the early Gothic period (13th to early 14th century) pointed and Moorish-looking and those of the 15th century adorned with fantastic trefoil and quatrefoil tracery. In the most ornate late Gothic palaces, such as the Ca’ d’Oro (1425–c. 1440), the central panel extends across the whole facade and is repeated on two upper stories. In the late 15th century, Renaissance forms began to influence palace architecture, as in the Palazzo Corner, also called Ca’ Grande (c. 1533–c. 1545, designed by Jacopo Sansovino), and the Palazzo Grimani (c. 1556, by Michele Sanmicheli, completed 1575). Buildings such as these introduced a measured proportion, tight symmetry, and Classical vocabulary to the facade. Mannerist and Baroque palaces built in the 17th century present a decorated Classical style with heavy moldings and grotesques, as in the Palazzo Pesaro (1659–1710, by Baldassare Longhena). The variety of styles along the larger canals, unified by the chiaroscuro of deep-set windows, decorative paneling, and building materials, provides much of the visual excitement of the Venetian landscape.

Economy

Legacy of maritime commerce

The landscape of Venice is as much a product of its economic activities, past and present, as of its physical environment. The enduring foundation of Venetian wealth was maritime commerce, initially in local products such as fish and salt from the lagoon, but rapidly expanding to include rich stores of merchandise as Venice became the entrepôt between Europe and the Middle East and Asia. The Rialto remains the core of Venetian commercial and mercantile activity. Fruit, fish, and other markets are concentrated under the open arcades of the Rialto New Building (1554, by Sansovino) and associated buildings. The Rialto Bridge and surrounding streets remain crowded with market stalls. Along the Merceria, the route from the Rialto Bridge to the Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square), are the offices of the major banks, still in the traditional banking quarter.

Venetian trade required well-constructed vessels both for transport and for protection from pirates, rivals, and Turkish military forces. Shipbuilding inevitably became a major industry. It occupied a whole sector in the northeast of the city, the Arsenal—a vast assemblage of basins, yards, and workshops for making sails, ropes, and ordnance. At its entrance is an elaborately decorated gateway with a fine group of stone lions guarding what was until the 18th century Europe’s largest industrial complex. Parts of the Arsenal are still used for Italian military purposes, though other parts have been converted into beautiful spaces for art and architecture exhibitions or for theatrical productions.

The port of Venice

The main port and related activities have now shifted to the parish of Mendigola in the west. There the main cruise liners dock, and the offices of shipping lines occupy former palaces. But the real focus of commercial shipping today is Port Marghera, developed next to the suburb of Mestre on the mainland shore west of Venice. Marco Polo International Airport (1960) was built on reclaimed land at Tessera, to the northwest of the city. Although these areas are incorporated into the administration of Venice, the chief port activities are largely separate from the city proper. Their impact on the old city, however, has been considerable. Marghera was for 50 years the site of a huge oil-refining and petrochemical complex, easily visible from Venice and a source of air pollution that severely damaged its architecture. Although industrial activity at Marghera has declined, the long-term damage of pollution is still felt.

On the other hand, Venice and Mestre play a key market role within the hugely important economic system of the Veneto region. The so-called “northeastern miracle” in this previously agricultural zone is based upon the production of high-quality goods by small and family-owned businesses in sectors such as textiles, sunglasses, ski boots, and other exports. Venice has contributed to this extraordinary development through the promotion of the image of Italy abroad and through the provision of political planning and financial services.

Traditional industries

Scattered throughout Venice are small boatyards and other traditional luxury craft workshops producing lace, textiles, and furniture. One of Venice’s oldest specialties is glassware. The finest products are of exquisite quality, but most of the present-day glass goods are trinkets for the tourist trade. In 1291 many of the glassworking furnaces were relocated on the island of Murano to the north as a precaution against fire. Murano remains the focus of present-day glass production, though the industry has declined considerably. Exhaust fumes from this ancient industry also have contributed to the corrosion of Venice’s stonework.

Other small island settlements such as Burano, Caorle, Malamocco, and Torcello traditionally depended on the local economic activities of the lagoon: fishing and fowling, salt production, and horticulture. Some settlements are swamped by seaside tourist developments, but the ancient trades are still carried on, though they have declined significantly. Fishermen in small craft continue to be common sights in the lagoon.

Tourism

Since the end of the 18th century, tourism has been at the heart of the Venetian economy. Luxury establishments such as the Danieli Hotel and the celebrated Caffè Florian were developed in the 19th century for wealthy foreigners. Small hotels and shops (particularly souvenir and carnival mask shops) line each major street and square along the routes from the station and parking lots to the Rialto and San Marco. Most of the city’s workers find employment in tourism and its related industries, now continuous through all seasons.

The tourist industry has been actively encouraged by the authorities. In the early 1980s they revived the ancient Carnival during February, a complement to the round of events of the Biennale, an international gathering held every other year that includes art, architecture, film, dance, music, and theatre festivals. The Venice International Film Festival, part of the Biennale, is held on the Lido every September. Films are shown throughout the city, attracting thousands of actors, critics, and other members of the motion picture industry. These events, together with the promotion of Venice as an international conference centre, bind the city’s economy ever more firmly to tourism.

Mass tourism, however, has also created problems for the city. The infrastructure is often close to collapse under the weight of literally millions of visitors every year, and residents have to deal with extremely high prices dictated by the tourist industry. Indeed, Venice seems to have transformed itself into a protected “museum-city” with very little in the way of real urban communities or a cultural life apart from that designed for outsiders.

Cultural heritage: the myth of Venice

Reacting to their physical environment and to a variety of cultural influences—from Italy, northern Europe, and the East—the Venetians consciously designed their city as an exceptional place. They regarded it as a divinely ordained centre of religious, civic, and commercial life, a community blessed by St. Mark, protected by its lagoon, and governed by a balanced constitution incorporating monarchy, aristocracy, and republican liberty. Historians refer to this perception as the “myth of Venice.” The architecture of the city, especially in the Renaissance, purposely emulated republican Rome, and the great rituals of state—the doge’s procession from his palace to the basilica or the annual Marriage with the Sea, when the doge cast a gold ring into the lagoon as a “sign of true and perpetual dominion”—publicly expressed the myth.

San Marco

The administrative heart of the Venetian republic was at San Marco, in the buildings surrounding the piazza and the piazzetta (“Little Square”). This spectacular piece of town planning depends for its impact on the articulation of paved open spaces, monumental buildings, carefully situated monuments, and the reflective waters of the lagoon.

The Molo

At the water entrance to the piazzetta is the Molo, a broad stone quay that was once the ceremonial landing spot for great officials and distinguished visitors. This “front door” to Venice is marked by two massive granite columns brought from the Orient in the 12th century; one supports the winged lion of St. Mark supporting a book and the other St. Theodore, Venice’s first patron, standing on a crocodile.

The Doges’ Palace

On the right-hand side of the Molo is the Doges’ Palace (Palazzo Ducale), whose crenellated mass appears to float upon the waters of the lagoon. Its plan, typical of Venetian palaces, is centred on an internal courtyard with a great staircase (Scala dei Giganti), and it incorporates three great architectural traditions—Gothic, Moorish, and Renaissance. Erected over many years after the burning of the original 9th-century structure in 976, most of the present building dates from the 14th to the 16th century. The palace was the core of political life in Venice—not only the residence of the elected doge (duke) but also the meeting place of the republic’s governing councils and ministries. Its chambers and staircases were richly decorated by a succession of Venetian painters and craftsmen. On the east side of the palace runs a narrow canal spanned by the Bridge of Sighs, which once led to the state prisons and is immortalized in Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18).

The Piazza San Marco

Before the five arched portals of the basilica lies the Piazza San Marco, a vast paved and arcaded square. Napoleon called the piazza the finest drawing room in Europe. The northern and southern wings of the square are formed by two official buildings, the Old Procurators’ Offices and the New Procurators’ Offices. The buildings now house fashionable shops and elegant cafés, whose string ensembles compete with each other in summer months to attract customers to their open-air tables. At the basilica end of the Old Procurators’ building stands the Clock Tower, a late 14th-century structure where the hours are struck by two Moorish figures.

Trade guild buildings

The oligarchic form of government during the republic excluded from power all non-noble Venetian families. There were, however, other ways in which ordinary Venetians could participate in public life. One of these was through the scuole, six major and numerous minor philanthropic confraternities and guilds that originated in the 13th century. Each school had a two-story meeting hall used for gatherings of its members and for discharging its charitable functions. The six great schools became enormously wealthy, enriching their buildings with splendid architectural decoration, as at the Great School of San Marco (founded c. 1260, rebuilt after a fire 1487–95; now a hospital), with its trompe l’oeil marble panels. The painted panels and ceilings of the Great School of San Rocco (instituted 1478, completed 1560) are masterpieces by Tintoretto. The School of San Giorgio degli Schiavoni (for Slavic merchants) has the finest collection of Vittore Carpaccio’s works outside Venice’s chief gallery, the Academy of Fine Arts, whose own collection came in part from a confraternity of flagellants, the school of San Giovanni Evangelista (founded 1261).

Churches

San Marco Basilica was the focus of public religious life, but the scores of other Venetian churches are an essential element of the city’s landscape. Their campaniles, rarely perpendicular, punctuate the skyline; their ornate facades grace the squares, from the delicate Gothic of Madonna dell’Orto (c. 1350, rebuilt in the early 15th century) and the restrained elegance of the early Renaissance at Santa Maria dei Miracoli (1481–89) to the Baroque flamboyance of San Moisè (1668).

The most impressive churches are those of the medieval mendicant orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans. The Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo in the Venetian dialect; founded in 1246 and consecrated in 1430) is of rose-coloured stone, its vast interior designed for the large congregations of urban poor whom it served. As a burial place, it was favoured by noble families; a number of doges lie there, commemorated by richly wrought sepulchral monuments. The church’s altarpieces, painted by Titian and Giovanni Bellini, were partially destroyed in a fire in 1867, and for masterworks it can no longer rival the Franciscan Santa Maria dei Frari (founded c. 1250, completed c. 1443), whose enormous Gothic mass rises in the densely settled area west of the Rialto. Titian’s Assumption (1516–18) stands over its high altar, and the church and sacristy display a magnificent collection of Venetian religious paintings from the High Renaissance.

In contrast to these great Gothic churches, and indeed to the small parish churches enmeshed in the urban fabric, are the church of La Salute and the Palladian churches seen across the water from San Marco. All serve a monumental as much as a religious function. Santa Maria della Salute (begun in 1631/32 under Baldassare Longhena and consecrated in 1687), erected in thanksgiving for release from plague, occupies a spectacular site where the Grand Canal opens into the San Marco Basin. Its mass of brilliant white marble rises majestically above the Gothic palaces of the Grand Canal. The churches of San Giorgio Maggiore (1566, completed in 1610), Il Redentore (1577–92), and Le Zitelle (1582–86) were all designed by Andrea Palladio; their Roman Classical facades were intended to be seen across the waters of the Giudecca Canal. San Giorgio and La Salute turn the open lagoon in front of San Marco into an aquatic extension of the piazza. Il Redentore is linked to Venice proper by a temporary bridge every July on the Feast of the Redeemer, when illuminated boats fill the Giudecca Canal and there is a display of fireworks.

Music

Colour and splendour reflecting civic pride are evident in Venetian music too. The works written for several separate choirs by Giovanni Gabrieli and Claudio Monteverdi for San Marco Basilica echoed around its Byzantine interior with stirring effect. After the opening in 1637 of the San Cassiano Theatre (Europe’s first public opera house), the commercial flair of Venice’s patricians, allied to the secular ambitions of choirmasters of San Marco such as Monteverdi and Francesco Cavalli (both noted opera composers) and Giovanni Legrenzi, made Venice the operatic capital of Europe.

Vocal and instrumental traditions were strengthened in the 18th century when four ospedali, orphanages run by churches, incorporated conservatories of music. Antonio Vivaldi was master of music at the Santa Maria della Pietà Hospice between 1703 and 1741. Venice’s opera house, La Fenice Theatre, built in 1792, became a major Italian music centre. The structure was severely damaged by fire in 1996. The premieres of Gioachino Rossini’s Tancredi (1813) and Guiseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto (1851) and La Traviata (1853) at La Fenice were witnessed by their composers. Many foreign composers also developed a special attachment to the city.

History

Origin of the city

Uniquely among Italy’s chief cities, Venice came into being after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. The Lombard hordes, whose incursions into northern Italy began in AD 568, drove great numbers of mainlanders onto the islands of the lagoon, previously the homes of itinerant fishermen and salt workers. The isolated communities, literally islands of Veneto-Byzantine civilization, became part of the exarchate of Ravenna when it was created in 584. When the mainland Byzantine city of Oderzo fell to the Lombards in 641, political authority was shifted to one of the islands in the Venetian lagoon.

The first elected doge, or duke, was Orso, chosen in an anti-Byzantine military declaration in 727, but he was succeeded by Byzantine officials until about 751, when the exarchate of Ravenna came to an end. There followed decades of internal political strife among various settlements vying for supremacy and between pro- and anti-Byzantine factions; also involved were attempts by church authorities to acquire temporal influence. Finally the doge Obelerio and his brother Beato formed an alliance with the Franks of Italy and placed Venice under the authority of the Italian king Pippin (died 810) in order to free themselves from Byzantine control.

Pro-Byzantine reaction to this event under the doges of the Parteciaco family led to the transfer of the seat of government to the Rialto group of islands, by then the centre for exiles in the factional fighting. Though a Franco-Byzantine treaty of 814 guaranteed to Venice political and juridical independence from the rule of the Western Empire, it did not confirm any effective dependence on the Byzantine Empire, and by 840–841 the doge was negotiating international agreements in his own name. The unusual legal and political position of the small independent duchy, situated in territorial isolation between two great empires, contributed greatly to its function as a trading intermediary.

A long succession of serious disputes between leading families concerning the office of doge did not halt the rapid development of trade. Increase in private wealth led to the gradual achievement of internal stability by creating a broader ruling class that was capable of putting a limit to the power of the doge. Gradually a national consciousness developed. Beginning in the late 9th century, the doges were chosen by popular election, though the right was frequently abused during times of civil strife. Finally the group of Rialto islands was solemnly transformed into the city of Venice (civitas Venetiarum).

The new order

The final collapse of family faction rule led to a change in the system of government, inaugurated by Doge Domenico Flabanico (1032–42). He restored to the people the sovereign right to elect the doge, but the term populus was in practice restricted to the residents of the Rialto and, more narrowly, to a select group of nobles. The executive organ was the ducal curia, and the legislative assembly was summoned to approve the doge’s acts. A new church was built for St. Mark, symbol of the Venetian spirit, under Doge Domenico Contarini (1043–70), an energetic defender of the religious independence of the duchy.

Growth of trade and power

In the conflict between papacy and empire, Contarini and his successors remained neutral (despite the complaints of Pope Gregory VII), while safeguarding Venetian economic interests in the Adriatic when the conflict began to be reflected on the Dalmatian coast. But the greatest danger to Venetian interests was the 11th-century Norman expansion under Robert Guiscard, which threatened to cut Venetian communications to the south. The successful action taken against the Normans by Doge Domenico Selvo and his successor Vitale Falier helped to assure Venetian freedom on the Mediterranean Sea.

Relations with the Byzantine Empire

In gratitude for Venetian aid against the Normans, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus granted Venice unrestricted trade throughout the Byzantine Empire, with no customs dues, a privilege that marked the beginning of Venetian activity in the East (1082). The Adriatic was not yet secured, however; Dalmatian ports were threatened by the Hungarians and Slavs, with whom it was difficult to come to agreement.

Toward the end of the 11th century, the Crusades focused the newly awakened trading interests of the West on the Mediterranean. At first Venice was chiefly concerned with gaining control of the European trading ports of the Byzantine Empire, leaving to private interests the commercial opportunities in Syria and Asia Minor. Although they had been the first to win trade concessions and a commercial quarter in Constantinople, the Venetians antagonized the Byzantines by their arrogance and lawlessness as well as by their superior enterprise. In helping the emperor Manuel I Comnenus drive the Normans out of Corfu (1147–49), they offended him by their aggressive behaviour.

Soon the mutual dislike between Venetians and Byzantines ripened into hatred. The emperor encouraged merchants from the Italian republics of Genoa and Pisa to compete in Byzantine markets, and the Venetians responded by destroying the establishments of their rivals. In 1171, to maintain order in his dominions, the emperor arrested all Venetian residents in Constantinople and the provinces and confiscated their goods. Relations were patched up in 1187 and again in 1198, but the Venetians remained embittered.