>>Flags/National Symbols of Europe<<
About the EHL/The Staff/Contact Us
Submit Articles & Content
Online Language Translation
Join our Mailing List
Donate to the EHL
Bookmark the EHL to Favourites!   

         
Click a Flag to Translate

• History of Christianization of Europe
• Soviet Union, Communist influence
• Map of European ethnic groups
• Map of Fascism in Europe (1922-75)
• History of Islamic conquest in Europe
• Religions & ethnic groups in Russia
• Detailed map of French colonization
• Detailed map of British colonization
• Napoleon's conquests & legacy

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• Muhammad cartoon crisis in pictures
• Stalin's private summer home
• Ravenna: capital of Gothic empire
• Czar Nicholas II's Ukrainian palace
• European traditional costumes/dress
• Inside the Vatican, house of all wealth

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• Islamic Mujahidin vs. Spain & El Cid
• Poland-Lithuania vs. Teutonic Order
• Nevskiy's Russia vs. German Crusaders
• Mussolini vs. Libyan Islamic fighters
• Qadafi: Europe will soon be Islamic
• Ivan the Terrible vs. Muslim Tatars 

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• The Gypsies in history and today, Europe's public enemy
• History of Jihad in Chechnya
& Caucasus vs. Russians
• History of the Muslim Tatars in Russia
• Ethnic & religious history of Serbs, Croats, & Bosnians
• Breakaway states and independence movements in Europe
• The ancient Germanic Runic alphabet and Runestones
• Inside Bulgaria, 1st Slavic nation,
land of Thracian masters of gold
• Visual history of Yugoslavia
• 4,000-year-old white mummies of China, bringers of Buddhism 

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

Gallery & history of Venice, golden capital of the seas
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)

Print this Article    •    About the Author    •    Bibliography/Sources

This article offers my personal photos and observations from my vacation to Venice, as well as a complete historical background ofVenice from 1000 until today. Northern Italy's Venice (Veneto or Venezia) is revered as one of the most unique and popular cities in the world, praised for its intricate mazes of canals, dense medieval buildings, and romanticized gondola boat rides. It is one of only a few cities of the world -- along with Tallinn in Estonia, Dubrovnik in Croatia, and tiny San Marino -- that allows a visitor to step back in time in a city virtually preserved as it was in its golden age some 400 years ago. The extreme density of the old original island of Venice has prevented the use of vehicles, and has prevented any dramatic expansion or construction for nearly a century.

The flag and standard of Venice, with the Venetian lion at center. (from atlasgeo.net)

For a brief historical background, Venice has an impressive history that few of its tiny size can match. Before 1870, there had been no unified Italy under native Italian authority ever since the collapse and conquest of the Roman Empire by Germanic kingdoms in the 5th century. The boot of the Mediterranean was divided into a number of thriving merchant city-states such as the nations of Naples, Milan, Modena, Toscagne (Tuscany), Genoa, Piedmonte, and to the northeast, the tiny coastal trade nation of Venice. Gradually growing into importance from as early as the 9th century, the loss of northern Italy from the German Empire in the 12th century allowed Venice to advance into an explosive maritime trading state without interference. Its position between the Hungarian, Croatian, Byzantine, and German/Austrian empires contributed to the status of Venice as one of the wealthiest states in the world, and no larger than Los Angeles County or New York City in Venice proper; an impressive feat that attracted the merchants of every European nation for several centuries. It developed a powerful military naval fleet aside from its peaceful trade endeavors that allowed this tiny coastal state to colonize and conquer territory from all across Eurasia, again making such a tiny territory a threat to major empires throughout its history. From 1300 until 1600, Venice had repeatedly besieged and claimed Cyprus, Crete, the Dalmatian coastline of western Croatia, Dubrovnik (Ragusa), Greek city-states established by the Crusaders whom had temporarily destroyed by the Byzantine Empire in the Fourth Crusade (13th century). It virtually monopolized trade in the region, benefiting from goods from the Islamic, Greek, Italic, and Germanic worlds. Venice was unique for the medieval era in that it did not have a hereditary kingship office; instead, it is today referred to as a republican government, but by no means was it the tolerant and weak government of modern liberalism in the United States and elsewhere; rather, an ultra-wealthy elite council elected the appropriate Doge (equivalent of a duke or count) who was often on occasion elected for life, though a number of the state's politicians were involved in government and social affairs during each Doge's reign. Venice was also by no means a tolerant society even whilst it traded with nations across the world, as the anti-Semitism of the Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare depicts. The latter end of Venetian hegemony in Europe involved Venice in dozens of coalition wars against the Islamic conquests of the Ottoman Turks, against Russian expansionist efforts, and against both France and Germany/Austria (generally the latter).

A rough map of the plethora of city-states that were modern Italy. (from cityofsound.com)

My photo of the canals of Venice. (click to enlarge)

By the late 1700s, the importance of Venice wavered. The Jihad of Islam had annexed Crete and Cyprus. The Germans (Austria) had conquered Venice's Croatian claims to save it from the Mujahidin's conquest from the east. Economic supremacy in the region faltered as the British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese empires began to exert authority over trade all across 6 continents. The final blow to Venetian power was ended with the conquest of Napoleon Bonaparte I in 1792, bringing his version of liberalism to the inhabitants of this most culturally and economically rich coastal gem. After Napoleon's defeat and the end of French supremacy in Europe at the hands of the Germans and British, Venice and northern Italy were given to the unified nation of Germany after the Congress of Wien from 1817 onward. Piedmonte-Sardinia quickly thrust its unification movement into northern Italy in a series of small wars after merging with the Italian mainland (collectively the "Kingdom of Two Sicilies"). A native Italian unifying war against the Germans of Austria saw the seizure of Venice and Lombardy into the first-time unified Italian state since the Roman Empire.

A rough map of the Napoleonic Empire. The pink hue denotes states either allied with Napoleon or nearly in submission. (click to enlarge)

Today, the city is virtually as it was at its peak. "Old Venice" is an island reached exclusively by either a near-suffocating and claustrophobic public transportation ferry or for nearly 60 Euros on a private boat ride that only requires some 15 minutes. The mainland of Venice is generally modern expansion from after unification. The Old City remains a historical and visual jewel, though post-WWII immigration by West African black Muslims and Arabs has caused an explosion in graffiti, drug use, crime, illegal product sale, and theft, as the local Italians protest with anger and irritation towards this unworkable integration. A trip on a gondola boat can reveal a massive 600-year-old church on one side of the canal and massive spray-painted Arabic-script graffiti on the other. As is famous in the Italian canal cities, the water is a shade of unclean brown, reeks intensely in parts, and is rife with trash, cigarette butts, and broken planks of wood. Locals and especially boatmen freely dispose of trash and discarded cigarettes into the canal waters. The Old City is extremely dense and crowded with foreigners on vacation, generally from the United States, and in some portions of the city movement even becomes constrained or impossible at all times of the day. The exclusivity of the city is exploited with great wisdom, as leather bags sold in the Old City may cost twice as much as on the mainland probably to pay the high rent of the small island. In the few hotels that monopolize the island, food and alcohol are price-gouged several thousand percent above their worth; a single shot of a nice Vodka like France's lovely Grey Goose may cost some 18 Euros or more (more than $20USD per shot). English is commonly spoken by nearly all of the inhabitants in Venice due to the expectation of tourism from England and America.

My photo of the traditional Venetian housing style. (click to enlarge)

My photo of a house covered in full gold leaf mosaics. (click to enlarge)

My photo of another set of wealthy homes on the canal shore. (click to enlarge)

My photo of a massive glorious church undergoing reconstruction. (click to enlarge)

My photo of the intricate carvings and etchings on a Venetian church.

The investment opportunity in Venice for tourism makes it such that businesses in this tiny city are often owned by immigrants from India and primarily Asians from China or Korea. They tend to speak Italian and even English fluently in their thriving family-owned businesses. The low employment cost of these Asian family businesses allow their restaurants to offer very low prices by comparison to other businesses in the old town. Though most people walking in Venice are non-Italian tourists, most of the native residents remain homogeneously Italian by great majority. This money-making potential also brings Venice's greatest social concern: a growing presence of West African black immigrants who are not citizens, do not live in Venice's old towns, do not speak Italian nor English (generally Senegalese Wolof and native Nigerian dialects), do not own stores nor business licenses, and contribute to most of the city's abhorant graffiti and theft (so the local Italians say angrily). The cobblestone city streets of Venice (void of cars once again) reveal a large number of black immigrants with large bags filled to the brim with goods: generally toys, leather bags and purses, and clothing. They arrive via the crowded public transportation, and, despite being virtually homeless and rife with poverty, are somehow able to offer anywhere from 10-50 leather purses for sale to the tourists. Many of these if not all are stolen from locals or from businesses, and many more are fraudulently sold at high prices to foreigners from the United States. At many times of the day, more than a dozen blacks can be seen running speedily through the city's corridors with plastic bags holding their wares. This is often due to the need for these non-resident immigrants to rush to the ferry to return to the mainland where they live, but is also because the Italian police often expel them from public areas for cooperative group harassment, theft, and impediment of the thoroughfare. This interesting phenomenon of unlicensed immigrant sale of goods -- along with what is perceived as their graffiti, crime, and theft -- remains Venice's biggest social problem and irritant, especially as the incredibly high rent and cost of living on the island is exploited by those well below the poverty line and entirely unable to speak Italian or English. The social rift brought by post-WWII immigration make it blatant that this coastal trade city was once a virtual utopia some 200 years ago, but is today socially in grave calamity and decline due to this immigration and their disproportionate involvement in crime and graffiti that have ruined this once-great city. Major Italian cities with large immigrant populations have a heavy presence of Communist youths not simply as a political idea but as a source of actual militant assaults on the native Italians, the wealthy elite, and the police. In Bologna, the immigrant-dominated Communist movement has left several police, citizens, and schoolteachers dead, and nearly every single wall in the city is covered in Communist graffiti. In Venice too, Communist hammers and sickles can be seen near ghettos and poor areas next to graffiti with words like "liberty", "freedom", "f*ck racism", "f*ck Fascists", etc. In some areas entire abandoned buildings can be seen spray painted from top to bottom with murals of Vladimir Lenin and Che Guevara to act as "headquarters" for youth gangs. Though some of their adherents are ethnic Italian, most of the local Italian citizens who are furious over the growth in graffiti and Communism blame it on the poor and uneducated immigrants from black West Africa and Arabia. Contrary to popular opinion, immigrants from the Middle East tend to be employed except from refugee areas. Africa is, of course, a very different story. As is apparent in the graffiti words written above, Communist youth rebel movements (often militant and violent) are a social response of those not tolerated and poor; i.e., the non-Italian immigrant community by majority. This social and ethnic clash is keenly noticed by the native Italian citizens.

My photo of a Muslim immigrant in Venice, a major problem in Italy due to the incompatibility of the two cultures. (click to enlarge)

My photo of a group of black immigrant street peddlers. They are often expelled or arrested by the police for theft, illegal unlicensed sale, graffiti, and crime.

The romanticized heritage of the Venetian Italians as poets, merchants, artists, chefs, and the pinnacle of a romantic loving experience is embraced here in Venice. Gondola sampan boats offer cheese, wine, gold-leaf rims and decorations, and singing. As with the rest of Venice, price gouging is practically a virtue; a boat ride for some 15 minutes can cost nearly 100 Euros. The local red wine, like most Italian wine bought in Italy (their exports are reputedly poor by comparison with those endemic), is quite rich and refined. Dozens of painters offer artwork of the glorious city for sale in the oil and watercolor mediums, as the memory of the lovely canal city is one to seldom stale in the minds of its visitors. Medieval armor, guns, swords, medieval clothing, hand-sewn rugs, and other goods are sold in exploitation of the city's medieval heritage. The long history of Venice -- combined with the density being so intense that expansion is nearly impossible -- causes a great number of the buildings to be on the verge of collapse. Some buildings are supported by large inflated buoys or buoyant to prevent collapse into the canals. Many buildings have large steel beams outside them supporting the foundations. Some buildings even have massive frescoes and mosaics of gold-leaf with Biblical scenes on their exteriors directly facing the canal waters. The city is, like much of Italy, sinking. Boats are required to drive slowly to prevent waters from splashing up onto the many buildings, restaurants, and locals standing at the shores. Many buildings are being restored to prevent this collapse and entropy of time. Subsidence and water damage make it such that in one building, windows tilt blatantly in different directions than the other. A tour of the city is truly akin to a step back in time.

Though the old city of Venice is rich in palaces, Catholic churches, monasteries, clocktowers, lighthouses, castles, and markets, the world-famous St. Mark's Square, St. Mark's Basilica, and the Doge's Palace are the most famous the city has to offer. St. Mark is the patron saint of the nation (now city) of Venice. A short walk through the city's many corridors opens into a massive courtyard filled with hundreds of thousands of pigeons in the square. These pigeons even climb on the arms of many tourists, a rather unclean affair. Restaurants and outside eating are also present right in the pigeon-infested courtyard. Tourists walking in the square may even be hit by pigeons flying by several times in a day. In the square stands a massive obelisk with Latin, etchings thereupon, statues, stone carvings, copper plating, and a solid-gold leaf cross atop. In the center of the courtyard stands one of the greatest buildings ever built in world history: St. Mark's Basilica. The cathedral was believed to originally house the corpse of St. Mark the Evangelist (who died during Jesus' time). His remains, burnt in a fire in 976, are housed in an altar in the main area of the church. This massive church that in its exterior appears bizarrely unique (in the Byzantine style, even Slavic-looking) and stout offers lines and crowds that stretch multiple miles around the square at midday. As Italians are a Catholic ethnicity, the basilica is one of the greatest testaments of the Catholic faith the world over. Women must wear veils or headscarves, and must cover their shoulders. Men must cover their shoulders and remove head coverings such as hats. This conservative tradition is strictly enforced, and headscarves may be bought inside the church. Visitors in the church may only stay for a short period. Entering into this glorious cathedral reveals that this is not simply a unique religious temple, but rather one of the greatest buildings in the world; it rivals the basilica of the Vatican, the Hagia Sophia, and all the cathedrals of Europe with ease. Nearly every inch of this massive church, whose interior raises hundreds of feet in the air, is covered entirely in fresco or mosaic of solid gold, gem, marble, stone, jewel, and even diamond. The exterior arches along with the five domes and their crosses, too, are covered in solid gold leaf. The value of this single building is easily in the billions, indeed a gem of all time. Each wall therein offers glorious and radiant depictions of Biblical scenes, of saints, of popes, of John the Baptist, of Jesus, of the sacrifice of Abraham's son Isaac (or, as Muslims demand, Ishmail), leaders of the city, and other sequences. The seemingly endless historical wealth of the Venetians allows this church to be such a testament to their endurance and prestige. The foundations of the church were built as early as the 11th century, though the glory of the cathedral did not reach its modern grace until centuries later when Venice grew into importance. No photography is allowed therein, therefore only the exterior can be shown below of the EHA's production other than by church authorities. This is an effort to prevent the decay and entropy of the building's treasures. This is the main church of the region's Catholic spiritual authority, and one of the centers of Europe's historical Catholicism excluding the the influence of the Papal States.

My photo of St. Mark's Square with the obelisk and the basilica in the background. (click to enlarge)

My photo of St. Mark's Basilica, one of the greatest structures ever built. (click to enlarge)

My photo of the interior archways of the basilica. Pure gold mosaics. (click to enlarge)

Photo of the interior by an authorized photographer. (click to enlarge)

A photo of the main archway in the interior. (from sights-and-culture.com)

An interior dome; its glory cannot be shown sufficiently. (click to enlarge)

Connected to the church is the famous Doge's Palace, the royal house of the elected duke-king of the Venetian "Republic". This is a famous and majestic building that epitomizes the Venetian style, though its archways are reminiscent of the Islamic architectural style of Alhambra (ألحمابرأ) in Spain when it was conquered by the Jihad of Islam in the 8th century. The structure of the Doge's Palace was built from 9th century foundations from the 13th onward in white and pink Veronese marble in the design style of loggias and arcades of Istrian stone, giving it a shimmering white glow of cleanliness and virginity that survives today (in contrast with other structures in the square which are literally black with dirt). Inside the palace are a variety of massive maps, globes of gold, huge corridors and hallways with statues, cherrywood, and original furniture made of ivory and gold. Even an original torture chamber can be entered, used by the doge's guards to quell the city from crime or spies. Many of the glorious paintings in this palace were stolen by Napoleon, and many of his generals used this great palace when staying in Venice for their expansion into German Austria and other Italian city-states. Venice offers the ability to experience the pinnacle of the Catholic world, the glorious wealth of this once-mighty trading empire, the heart of the Italian world, and the abundant history this volatile region has experienced for the last 1,000 years.

My photo of the Doge's Palace at right and the basilica of St. Mark in the center. (click to enlarge)

A glorious building that is part of the Doge's Palace with a beautiful clock at center. (click to enlarge)

A view from the canals of the main square with the palace at right. (from sights-and-culture.com)

A photo of a main room in the Doge's Palace.

Another interior of the Doge's Palace.

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is the owner and Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I am working for a doctorate in history, with a specific emphasis on Islamic and European histories. I am well versed in all world cultures, ethnicities, religions, languages, politics, and historical evolution in relation to and against each other.

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES USED:

Personal observations, photographs.

When known, the owners of non-EHL images are written below the images.