Venice, 1368
We have no photographs of Venice in the 14th Century and the images we do have were drawn to a standard of realism different from our own. In order to envision what Venice looked like seven hundred years ago we must use our imagination to add what has been subtracted and subtract what has been added.
The image to the left, a contemporary drawing of 14th Century Venice, is fanciful and approximate. The real story is quite different.
In the beginning…
Venice was built where a city should never have been built, on shifting salt marshes in the middle of a lagoon. In Roman times only fishermen and salt gatherers lived there, their houses on stilts. Everything below was subject to the tides which continually reshaped the landscape.
The Huns invade…
Everything changed in the late 5th Century A.D. Attila and his Huns invaded northern Italy. Romans from nearby mainland cities fled to the lagoon for safety. They brought with them everything they could carry, even the bricks and marble from their mainland palaces. Forced into the lagoon by desperation, they began building a refuge among the salt marshes.
“The homes [of these lagoon dwellers] are scattered like the nests of seabirds among the clustered islands of the lagoon. They are secured with nothing stronger than roots and reeds holding the earth in place beneath them, providing their sole bulwark against the sea and her riotous tides. None of them is rich, none poor; they are all the same. They eat the same abundant fish. Their houses are all alike, boats tethered like horses beside them, and no man envies another’s mansion. In fact envy, which rules the rest of the world, is unknown among them. They spend their days raking the shores for salt. Through this art every wave mints the coin that enables them to buy whatever they need that nature has not provided them. While there may be men who care little for gold, all men are desirous of sprinkling their meat with salt.”
Out of the marshes
arose the greatest maritime empire of its time, making Venice the richest, the most envied, admired, and remarkably beautiful city.