Week Ten

Utopia and Upheaval: The Renaissance City (I)

The Renaissance City

● Fights between Guelphs (pro-pope and pro-cities) and Ghibellines (proimperial)

● Tourism boomed after the decline of venetian trade
● One of venice’s major advanatges was that it didn’t have to maintain roads

● Italian cities had a remarkable degree of autonomy

● Venice in particular was very self-contained
● In 1204, the year of the fourth crusade watershed moment
● Before this date Venice was not a huge player, had begun as a home for refugees, several
small villages small islands
● main economic activities were fishing and alt harvesting for a long time
● Venice was never subject to the pope or the emperor
● Venice eventually became a hub of the global spice trade
● You can’t grow pepper and lots of other spices in europe
● Venice had a close relationship with Byzantine traders
● When the venetians were asked by the pope to lead a crusade, they didn’t listen to initial
orders and sacked Constantinople
● Got away with it because no one at the time could bring them to justice
● Thus the venetians subdued the byzantines
● Venice took their art, like hippodrome horses, represented a claiming of power over this
christian hub
● From this period onwards the venetians claimed “staple rights” in the adriatic, every ship
passing through had to bring their cargo to market
● Here the venetians relied on their fleet, the strongest in the mediterranean, to enforce
● When the spanish and portuguese start their ‘voyages of discovery” there is a massive
effect on the venetian economy (not just the columbian expeditions
● For the venetians the portuguese exhibitions were the most threatening, circumvented the
traditional venetian trading routes
● After this the venetians increasingly withdrew from long distant trade, focused on
craftwork
● E.g. the venetian glass blowers
● Venice also became what is comparable to singapore
● Venice is the place where tourism was invented (particularly in the 18th century
 ● Nominally venice remained independent until the late 18th century, when it fell to the
french under napoleon
● In the late 19th century the modern italian state emerges and venice becomes fully italian
● Even though we associate venice with being quintessentially italian, it was quite
independant
● Venice is emblematic of “beauty, wise government, and communally controlled
capitalism
The Physical Appearance of Venice
● Island in a lagoon
● This means that there are no streets in the conventional sense (small lanes on the sections
on firm ground)
● Most important arteries of traffic were waterways, and the most important of these was
the Canale Grande
● Lay all canals side by side is 28 mi
● Venice is today a completely car free city
● Today you can take motorboats, but back then gondolas and traghetti
● Three bridges across the canale grande today… but the first and most important was the
Rialto Bridge
● It was, and still is, located next to the market
● No market would have had a more spectacular display
● The rialto market was a permanent fair
● The other main square (besides the Rialto Market) was St. Mark’s Square
● Orbis rather than Urbis, the orb is the globe and the urbs the city,” market place of the
world”
● Rialto was the site of major banking transactions
● Furthermore if you wanted to know the news, you headed to Rialto
● Even shakespeare knew → “what news on the Rialto?”
● The venitian authorities disliked the idea of too many foreigners staying too long
● They worried about exterior religious differences
● The ventian governent forced foreigners to reside in Fondacci, compounds where the
enterances were only open during the daytime
● In 1516 the venetian authorities decides to confine venice’s jews to a ghetto, part of
larger efforts of segregation
● Though the authorities went to great length to contain foreigners through spatial
segregation, the diversity was its’s gret strength
● Venice had a prodigious arsenal on its southeastern point
Religious Topography of Venice