Venice and Verona- an Overview

Venice is one of the most iconic cities in Italy, maybe even Europe. This city became one of the largest economic centers in the world, despite its humble beginnings. 1500 years ago or so, barbarians were terrorizing Italy after the fall of the Roman Empire, destroying towns, raping and pillaging their way through the once mighty empire. In hopes of refuge, people who lived in what is now the Veneto region of Italy decided to move into the lagoon. Though there are islands (Murano, Burano…) in the lagoon, they elected to go with building islands themselves. Be driving wood down as deep as they could get it to go, through the muddy surface and down to a thin layer of clay, the modern day city began to take shape.

One interesting thing we learned this weekend in Venice is that, according to our tour guide, Venice still sits on the same planks it was originally built on. The mud in the marsh has kept anything from getting to the wood for so long that now Venice sits on petrified wood instead of regular wood. Once one realizes that Venice was entirely constructed on its own, it becomes clear that there is no natural resource for the Venetians. They cannot plant trees because those will destroy the planks holding up the city. There is no natural source of water. There are absolutely zero natural resources, no wood, no stone, no marble, no food, no anything. The Venetians didn’t have the same luxury that we have today, in that we can send supplies and goods around the world fairly quickly. Every stone that makes up the streets, the iconic st. marks square, the Campanile… everything, had to be brought in by hand. Because of the weight and cost of marble, most buildings in Venice are actually built out of bricks (again, brought in by hand), then after leaving a little gap so the salt doesn’t destroy the stone, marble covers the building.  To solve the problem of fresh water, Venetians eventually devised a water catchments system where rainwater would be directed to piazzas around Venice, where the water would drain into a place where it would be filtered through sand and limestone. Before draining into a giant clay cistern  below the city. Today, Venetians get their water straight from the Alps and the catchments system no longer used but the wells can still be seen in almost every piazza.

Why in the world would someone go through all this trouble? There is no trees (which means no shade in the summer), there are no natural resources so everything is wildly expensive to acquire, Water is always going to be an issue, there is no place for trash… why? The lagoon that Venice is built in is, on average, about 8 feet deep, with most the canals in the city even only really being waste high. There are, however, natural deep spots where the Venetians devised a system for Venetians to know where to maneuver boats without running aground. This allows for complete and total protection from invaders, barbarians and whatever other undesirables may attempt to enter the city. However, being built, this means that Venice is a city that is completely made up of immigrants. As a result, Venice became a melting pot of cultures, with a wide variety of religions being practiced within the city and being completely tolerated. According to the tour guide, this was one of the major points of contention with the church and Venice. To quite the tour guide, “the church didn’t like Venice very much… or at all actually”. This is because Venetians would conduct business with Jewish people, people from the Middle East, Africa, wherever there was a customer.  This was done without much of a second thought and apparently, that didn’t make the church all that happy. I found it ironic that, though the Venetians did business with everybody without discrimination,  they were also leaders of the devastating 4^th crusade, which isn’t exactly a non-discriminatory event.

The Venetians, however, reaped huge benefits from this crusade, plundering a ton of treasures (and keeping them for themselves) and snatching up extra territory. The Venetians power quickly grew to previously un-reached heights and the city flourished in the powerful position it held.  Venice and Genova battled for supremacy of the seas, with Venice finally getting the upper hand in 1380. Venice, now controlling the sea and a good chunk of land, turned their attentions inward toward the Po river valley, controlling the very lands they fled from years ago as well as snatching up parts of Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna.

The Venetians luck took a downward turn though in the middle of the 15^th century. Constantinople fell in 1453 and Venice lost Morea in 1499, which weakened the Venetians hold on the Mediterranean. At that point in time, the Mediterranean was the center of the world. Goods traveling east to west or west to east had to either be slowly carried across the land or taken by boat through the Mediterranean Sea. When the Americas were discovered in 1492, combined with Vasco da Gama making it around the horn of Africa in 1498,  Venice’s hold on the economy of the world began to slip through her fingers.

Venetians, however, hardly seemed to notice, living extravagantly and enjoying the society they had spent so long creating. Their city attracted people from all over the world to do business, they had one of the most powerful governments in the world as well as the most stable (The Doge was the ruler in Venice from 726 until the unification of Italy in 1861). Because of the center of wealth that Venice had become, they became a major trading place for luxury goods as well as having a strangle hold on things like fine glass making (thanks to Murano) and fine laces (thanks to Burano). Venice’s population peaked at over 200,000 inhabitants (though now it is down to close to 16,000) .

Today, Venetians are greatly outnumbered by visitors. They are on pace to have over 25 million visitors in per year. Costs of living in Venice are remarkably high. To try to keep the ‘feel’ of Venice, there are miles and miles of red tape to get through so doing any upkeep on buildings that are at least 400 years old (almost all buildings are older than 400 years old) is not only wildly expensive and time consuming, but is just a pain. Venetians joke that they are living in a museum where they aren’t allowed to touch anything. They feel as if Venice is turning into a Disneyland for adults, where every home is becoming a hotel, tourists snuff out every good place and time cannot move forward. Though Venetians may not be exactly thrilled with Venice, making it there for Carnivale this last weekend was nothing short of wonderful.

Carnivale itself used to be the one last shot for Venetians to go crazy before lent. Carnivale dates back to at least the 13^th century and could be even older but there aren’t good records of it. However, after the Austrians took hold of Italy, they banned all celebrations  so Carnivale went on a 200-year hiatus, only to be revived in the late 1970s. Carnivale would be the backdrop for our visit this weekend. We left Torino early Friday morning and made the long drive to Venice. When we finally arrived to Venice, we wound our way up and down bridges, over a canal then back over it a few hundred meters back down the canal and made what felt like a thousand turns before getting to the hotel. We went from the hotel and down to the tour we had at Piazza San Marco. Venice was very crowded with people for Carnivale.

As you can see, there are people everywhere. we made it to a quiet place and learned a good amount about the history of Venice. 

sweet parking garage eh?

 We finally got to the church you see below which is where all Venetians want to get married. They call it their jewel box church

 We made it to what is left of Marco Polo's house. I guess they used parts of the house to make this building and the one behind me as I took this picture.

After the tour ended, we made our way to the Rialto bridge and then to dinner where I had a meal that consisted of lasagna, chicken and Fries.

From there, we made our way back to the hotel and joined in the Carnivale festivities. sadly, it was too dark to get any pictures but it was amazing how many people there were out in masks having a good time. The next day we made it to the top of the Campanile, into St. Marks, over to both Murano and Burano before calling it a night. The following day we made it to Verona and got to check out Juieta's balcony and the 3rd largest coliseum in Europe before making our way home. I will go into more detail on those ventures in the next couple blogs. Hope you enjoyed reading!