Venice and its Lagoon

Attribution:

pagnus83

Venice

Italy

Key Dates

No official information exists about the origins of Venice but a settlement certainly existed here as early as the first century AD. The city we know today is the reult of a flourishing period of trade between the 13th and 17th centuries.

Key People

The city is thought to have originally been made up of refugees from towns around the region, who were fleeing the Germanic and Hun invasions.

VIDEO: Lord Norwich talks about Venice

A major seafaring power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the city of Venice stretches across 118 small islands in the Venetian Lagoon. Having felt the force of the imperial squirmishes in the early part of the first millennium AD, Venice became the seat of duke Agnello Particiaco in the ninth century and the monastery of St Zachary and basilica of St Mark were built here. The importance of the city increaded when the relics of St Mark the Evangelist were stolen from Alexandria and put in St Mark's basilica. The city's position then made it a powerful trading centre, drawing tradesmen and tourists from around the world. It became closely associated with Byzantium and was created an imperial power after the Fourth Crusade seized Constantinople in 1204.

Human intervention in the 15th and 16th centuries halted the evolution of the Lagoon, which was fast becoming a marsh, and helped prevent the city from becoming engulfed. The city is still under threat of becoming submerged because of subsidence caused by pumping water out of the aquifer rock on which much of it sits.

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