Page 125 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Venice & The Veneto

C ASTELL O  123

p Arsenale
Map 8 F1. 4 Arsenale.
Limited public access.
Heart of the city’s maritime
power, the Arsenale was
founded in the 12th century
and enlarged in the 14th to 16th
centuries to become the greatest
naval shipyard in the world.
The word “arsenal” derives from
the Arabic darsina’a, house of
industry – which indeed it was.
At its height in the 16th
century, a workforce of 16,000, Entrance to the Arsenale, guarded by 16th-century towers
the arsenalotti, was employed to
construct, equip and repair the for the Byzantine emperor Some parts of the Arsenale,
great Venetian galleys (see pp48– against some Greek rebels. such as the Corderie, the old
9). One of the first production By the 17th century, when the rope factory, are now being
lines in Europe, it was like a city seeds of Venetian decline were used as performance spaces
within a city, with its own work­ well and truly sown, the number or exhibition centres, mostly
shops, warehouses, factories, of arsenalotti plummeted to for the Biennale (see p260). A
foundries and docks. Surrounded 1,000. Following the Fall of the research consortium developing
by crenellated walls, the site Republic in 1797, Napoleon marine and coastal technologies
today is largely abandoned. destroyed the docks and also operates from the Arsenale.
The huge gateway and vast stripped the Bucintoro (the
site are the only evidence Doge’s ceremonial ship) of its The Assembly-Line
of its former splendour. The precious ornament. Cannons
gateway, in the form of a and bronzes were melted System
triumphal arch, was built in down to contribute to victory
1460 by Antonio Gambello and monuments celebrating the
is often cited as Venice’s first French Revolution.
Renaissance construction. Today the area is under
The two lions guarding the military administration and for
entrance were pillaged from the most part closed to the
Piraeus (near Athens) by Admiral public. The bridge by the
Francesco Morosini in 1687. arched gateway affords partial The arsenalotti, master shipbuilders
A third lion, bald and sitting views of the shipyard, or try of the 16th century
upright, bears runic inscriptions taking a scenic trip on a
on his haunches, thought to have vaporetto (either route 4.1 During the Arsenale’s heyday,
been carved by Scandinavian or 4.2), which follows the a Venetian galley could be
mercenaries who in 1040 fought perimeter of the Arsenal. constructed and fully
equipped with remarkable
Lagoon entrance Arsenale Novissimo, speed and efficiency. From
15th–16th century the early 16th century the
hulls, which were built in the
New Arsenal, were towed
past a series of buildings in
Old sail the Old Arsenal to be
factory equipped in turn with
rigging, ammunition and
food supplies. By 1570, when
Venice was faced with the
Turkish threat to take Cyprus,
the Arsenale was so fast it
was capable of turning out
an entire galley in 24 hours.
Henry III of France witnessed
Arsenale the system’s efficiency in
Vecchio, 1574 when the arsenalotti
12th–13th Arsenale Nove, completed a galley in the
century 14th century time it took for him to
Corderia partake in a State feast.
Late 18th-century engraving of the Arsenale

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