Built on wooden piles driven into a lagoon and knitted together by hundreds of bridges, Venice was the seat of a republic that outlasted almost every other in Europe. Its churches and palaces still carry the gold, marble and looted treasure of an empire built on trade with Byzantium and the East.
At a glance
Venice occupies 118 islands in the Venetian Lagoon, linked by 391 bridges and threaded by some 177 canals. The city was built on wooden piles sunk into the mudflat, a foundation that has held for centuries in the anaerobic mud beneath the water; the Rialto market district alone is said to stand on around 20 million such piles. The historic centre has no roads, cars or bicycles, and movement is on foot or by water.
The lagoon setting also brings problems. Venice is subsiding slowly, by a few millimetres a year according to monitoring, and periodic high water, the acqua alta, floods the lower parts of the city; the November 2019 event was the worst since 1966. Tourism pressure on the historic centre is considerable and has been debated by UNESCO since the late 1980s; visitors are best guided by the city’s own official tourism channels for current management measures.
Key facts
- Republic: the Republic of Venice, La Serenissima, governed from 697 to 1797 CE, ending with Napoleon Bonaparte’s conquest in May 1797.
- The Doge: elected for life through a ten-round process alternating lot and vote, designed to stop any one family dominating; a doge could not leave the city without the Senate’s permission.
- St Mark’s Basilica: begun in 828 CE to house the relics of St Mark the Evangelist, its surfaces covered by roughly 8,000 square metres of gold mosaic.
- The four bronze horses: taken from the Hippodrome of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade of 1204, displayed on the basilica’s façade until Napoleon removed them to Paris in 1797; returned in 1815, the originals are now kept inside and copies stand on the façade.
- The Bridge of Sighs: built in 1600 to connect the Doge’s Palace to the New Prison, its name coined by Lord Byron in the early nineteenth century.
- Heritage status: inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site under the title Venice and its Lagoon in 1987.
History
Tradition places the founding of Venice at noon on 25 March 421 CE, though the settlement’s real origins lie in refugees fleeing the Hunnic invasions of northern Italy in the fifth and sixth centuries, who took to the lagoon islands as a defensive measure. The first doge was elected in 697 CE, beginning eleven centuries of republican government.
Venice grew up under Byzantine suzerainty and secured trading rights in Constantinople in 992 CE, a concession that shaped its architecture, mosaics and religious imagery for centuries. Its merchant fleets came to control Adriatic and eastern Mediterranean trade routes and the spice trade from Asia; the Fourth Crusade of 1204, which ended in the sack of Constantinople, gave Venice dominion over a large share of the former Byzantine Empire.
Decline set in with Portugal’s opening of the Cape of Good Hope route in 1498, which bypassed Venice’s spice monopoly, compounded by wars with the Ottomans, the loss of Cyprus in 1571 and, in the same year, the Christian victory at the Battle of Lepanto, in which Venice’s galley fleet played a decisive part. The republic itself was extinguished by Napoleon in 1797. Venice and its Lagoon was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
What you see
The classic approach is by vaporetto, the city’s water bus, along the Grand Canal from the railway station at Santa Lucia to Piazza San Marco, a slow-moving passage past palaces, churches and market buildings that line the canal’s full length. The square itself, called by Napoleon the drawing room of Europe, is framed by St Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace and the Campanile, which collapsed in 1902 and was rebuilt a decade later.
The Doge’s Palace was for over five hundred years the seat of government, the law courts and the state prison combined. From it the Bridge of Sighs leads to the New Prison, its small limestone-grated windows once giving condemned prisoners their last glimpse of the city. The Giants’ Staircase within the palace was where doges were crowned.
The Gallerie dell’Accademia holds a collection of Venetian Renaissance painting that includes work by Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and Bellini, and is generally regarded as the fullest gathering of Venetian painting in the city.
Practical information
- Getting around: the historic centre is closed to cars and bicycles; movement is on foot or by vaporetto and gondola.
- Tickets and access: current arrangements for St Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace and the Accademia, including any city access charges, are best checked through Venice’s official visitor channels before travel.
- Flooding: acqua alta can affect low-lying routes, including parts of Piazza San Marco; visitors should check tide forecasts locally.
Getting there
Venice is reached by train to Santa Lucia station, from which the Grand Canal and its vaporetto services lead directly into the historic centre. As the old city admits no road traffic, all onward movement within it is on foot or by water.
Nearby
- Piazza San Marco — the square from which St Mark’s Basilica, the Campanile and the Doge’s Palace are all reached on foot.
- Rialto Bridge — a short vaporetto or walk along the Grand Canal from San Marco, the oldest crossing point of the canal.
- Gallerie dell’Accademia — on the same side of the Grand Canal, within walking distance via the Accademia Bridge.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- Gallerie dell’Accademia
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