On this date… 25 March 421
Venice Founded
Imagine. A stinking, swampy city of small islands that can only be reached via flat boats or, later, bridges. That’s Venice for you. That’s not the image it wants to present to the world, though. Instead, it pictures itself as a serene city floating on water, full of canals, bridges to link them, and beautiful people wearing masks. Alternatively called “Serenissima” (the most serene in Italian), the “City of Water,” “City of Masks,” “City of Bridges,” “The Floating City,” and “City of Canals,” Venice has many nicknames, and a history full of tantalizing people. Like other ancient cities and places including Rome and Japan, the city has a legendary founding. Venetian myth claims it was founded on this day, 25 March 421.
The city that became the dominant merchant city of the Middle Age Mediterranean world was founded by refugees fleeing from the waves of Germanic, Visigoth, and Hun invasions (that’s what happened when Julius Caesar didn’t conquer all the Germanic tribes and people like Atilla came to power). What became metropolitan Venice was a rather small community from its legendary founding until it became a division of the Exarchate of Ravenna in 584 as part of the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire, aka the Byzantine Empire. The emperor appointed an exarch, or viceroy, to rule the area, until the Lombards invaded and killed the last one in 751. Of course, the Venetians, being so far away from the capital of Constantinople, had their own ideas. They declared themselves the Republic of Venice in 697, with many ties to the Byzantines and mainland Europe. By 840 the city leader, the doge (or duke) had effective control over local and international policies.
The city received a big boost to prestige when in 828 it acquired the famed winged lions of St Mark the Evangelist that it placed on the basilica (Saint Mark’s Basilica). Its power continued to expand from salt trading to further maritime activities all across the Mediterranean, including commerce between Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. It also acquired control of most of the islands in the Aegean, including Crete, and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, and expanded control inland (known as terraferma) to present-day Italian regions of Veneto (Verona, Padua, and other cities), Friuli-Venezia Giulia (Trieste) and into eastern Lombardy (Bergamo and Brescia), as well as overseas area along the Adriatic (Split and Zara in Croatia, and more in Montenegro and Albania). The republic was so powerful and influential that it acquired special recognition from the Byzantine emperor granting it a foothold in Constantinople itself as well as unrestricted trade and not having to pay customs, making Venetian traders very, very rich. Venice was even a leader in the Fourth Crusade that, instead of trying to retake the Holy Land, instead attacked Constantinople, resulting in the sack of 1204 (more on this in a later On This Date).
But, like all good things, it could not last. With the rise of Ottoman power in the East (epitomized by the end of the Byzantine Empire with the fall of Constantinople in 1453), the discovery of the “New World” in the West, and the rise of the great European powers, Venice’s own power and prestige declined. Cut off from its rich eastern trade, without a foothold to the Atlantic in the West, and with other cities and cultures growing in prestige during the Renaissance, Venice floundered, becoming a shell of its former glory. By the mid-1700s it lost almost all of its overseas territories and the Republic officially ended in 1797, where it (temporarily) became part of the Hapsburg Empire, before eventually joining the rest of the Italian peninsula in the Kingdom, and eventual country, of Italy.
Famous for its Grand Canal, Rialto plaza, beautiful architecture, and as the birthplace of Marco Polo, Casanova, composer Antonio Vivaldi, and painter Titian (amongst many other famous Venetians), Venice holds an unrivaled place in the Western imagination. Though it started as a refuge from fearsome attacks, it soon built itself up to a safe haven for merchants, artists, thinkers, and more. To go from a malaria-infested swamp to one of the most renowned cities in the world is perhaps Venice’s greatest achievement.
