Page 43 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Venice & The Veneto

introducing venice and the vene t o  41

THE HISTORY OF VENICE

AND THE VENETO

the winged lion of St Mark is a familiar sight to anyone travelling in the veneto.
Mounted on top of tall columns in the central square of vicenza, verona,
chioggia and elsewhere, it is a sign that these cities were once part of the
proud venetian empire. the fact that the lion was never torn down as a hated
symbol of oppression is a credit to the benign nature of venetian authority.
In the 6th century AD, Venice had been no anyone was to devise until the 19th
more than a collection of small villages in a century, and it stood the city and its
swampy lagoon. By the 13th century she empire in good stead until the bumptious
ruled Byzantium and, in 1508, the pope, figure of Napoleon Bonaparte dared
the kings of France and Spain and the Holy to intrude in 1797. But by then Venice
Roman Emperor felt compelled to join had become a byword for decadence
forces to stop the advances of this powerful and decline, the essential mercantile
empire. As the League of Cambrai, their instinct that had created and sustained
combined armies sacked the cities of the the Serene Republic for so long
Veneto, including those such as Vicenza having been extinguished. As though
which had initially sided with the League. exhausted by 1,376 years of independent
Venetian territorial expansion was halted, existence, the ruling doge and his
but she continued to dominate the eastern Grand Council simply resigned, but
Mediterranean for another 200 years. their legacy lives on, to fascinate visitors
The Venetian system of government with its extraordinary beauty and
came as close to democracy as remarkable history.

A map dated 1550, showing how little Venice has changed in nearly 500 years
Tintoretto’s Triumph of Doge Nicolò da Ponte (1580–84), Sala del Maggior Consiglio, Doge’s Palace

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