VENICE

Historical Informations

At the fall of the Roman Empire barbarian hordes descended from the north of Europe, bringing death and destruction. The inhabitants of the Venetian cities, to escape from the ferocity of the Huns and Vandals, took refuge in the islands of the Adriatic lagoon: thus it was that around 450 AD Venice was born, the "city of islands," subjected to Byzantine influence and governed by a duke, or Doge, elected by a popular assembly.

Wise use of diplomacy and arms soon led to Venice taking control of the coasts of Istria, Dalmatia and Puglia and to becoming a true power, increasingly independent of Byzantium.

The splendor of what came to be called the "Serenissima" Republic, however, only began in 1202, when the Doge Enrico Dandolo furnished important help to the knights of the fourth Crusade in the conquest of Constantinople. From the division of the Byzantine spoils, the Serenissima gained immense riches, allowing it to expand its own commercial horizons: its ships dominated the Mediterranean as far as the Middle East and returned to the lagoons laden with precious merchandise not found in Europe.

Venice reached the heights of its power at the beginning of the fifteenth century, after having defeated the Duke of Milan and having conquered many cities of northeastern Italy, becoming along with Milan and Florence one of the principal powers of the Italian peninsula.

From this time began the slow but inexorable descending spiral of the Serenissima. From 1415 the Turks conquered the Venetian colonies in the Middle East one by one, while at the end of the century the Portuguese, circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope, opened a new route to the Indies, taking from the Venetians commercial primacy in those areas.

The final blazing military victory was that of Lepanto, in 1571, against the Turkish fleet. Then the descent became unstoppable. In 1797 Venice lost its independence. It was conquered by Napoleon Bonaparte who successively ceded it to the Austrians. The Serenissima Republic didn't exist any more. Only seventy years later, in 1866, the Venetian territories would become part of the emerging Kingdom of Italy.

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