THE CULTURAL SPACES OF VENICE

Robert N. St. Clair, University of Louisville

Wei Song, University of Louisville

 

Introduction

Venice (Italian: Venezia) is located in Northern Italy on the Adriatic Sea. The city is really a cluster of 118 islands located in a marshy Venetian lagoon along the Adriatic Sea.  These islands are connected by bridges and land areas that constitute the city of Venice.  It has a population of 271,251 but in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan area, the population is about 1,600,000.  Venice is known by several descriptions.  She is called La Dominante (the leader), Serenissima (the most serene), the City of Water, the City of Bridges, and the City of Light.  However, the most glowing title given to Venice is that of the most beautiful city in the world (Barzini, 2008).  Venice is known for its 150 canals and 400 bridges that are built on an archipelago of 118 islands. In the old center, the canals serve the function of roads.  All forms of transportation are either on the water by water taxi or Gondola or on foot along the many streets on the various islands.  Cars have no place in Venice.  In the 20th century, a causeway was developed that led to train service from Europe to Venice.    

 There are 400 bridges that connect the 118 islands and 150 canals in Venice.

The Urban Planning of Venice

Venice is a baroque city.  Its city plan is concomitant with the emergence of a strong city-state.  Strict zoning is present and land use is divided into several functions. The most obvious function is the separation of public space from private space.  The purpose of the baroque layout is to display power and strength.  The center is usually public and commercial.  In Venice, the center is the Piazza San Marco.  It is here that one finds the Palace of the Duke with its impressive works of art and displays of wealth.  It is also here that one finds the sacred space (Eliade, 1959) of Venice, the Basilica of San Marco with its walls of gleaming golden mosaics.  Churches are located in public squares (campi) but the church of San Marco is different.  It located in the Piazza.  It is a special sacred space in Venice.  It is far more than a commemorative symbol.  It provides Venice with a baroque identity along side of the Palace of the Duke.  All of the roads in Venice, it should be mentioned, radiate out from the Piazza which defines the center of the city. 

 

Piazza di San Marco

The Piazza di San Marco is the baroque center of Venice.  It is where the sacred space of the church of San Marco can be found and it is where the governmental offices are located.  Across from the piazza, one finds a historical museum that offers a tribute to this reign of power and prestige. 

            The architecture of Venice differs from many European cities.  In normal cities, the facades of the buildings face the road, but in Venice, these face the canals and waterways.  Many of these facades are impressive in architectural design.  Most houses in Venice are three storey buildings.

Ground floor	This floor is used for business transactions. It consists of store rooms, show rooms, and offices
The Grand floor	Il piano nobile (the noble floor) is located over the ground floor and is used to entertain guests.  It is lavishly decorated
The Upper floor	This part of the house contains the stand rooms needed as living space, a study or a library.
The attic	This is built into the roof space and is where one finds the rooms for the servants

There are several different façade styles in Venice.  The fondaco dei Turchi, for example has a Byzantine style of the 12th and 13th centuries.  The Palazzo Ducale has a Gothic style associated with the 13th to 15th centuries.  The Palazzo Grimani has a Renaissance styleof the 15th and 16th centuries and the Ca’ (Casa) Pesaro has a Baroque style assocviaed with the 17th century.

The Sestieri (Districts)

There are six districts that mark the cultural spaces of Venice.  Some of them are more famous and well known because of tourism (Norwich, 1989). 

Cannaregio	Cannaregio is the most northerly sestiere (district).  The name of this quarter is derived from the canne (canes or reeds) that grew there centuries ago.  The waterway was called Canal Regio (Royal Canal) and is the entry point for most visitors to Venice.  Over a third of the population of the city (40,000) lives in this district.   The famous Marco Polo and his family lived in Cannaregio.
San Polo	This district was named after the church of San Polo. This is one of the liveliest districts in the city with its market stalls, small shops, and local bars.  The Rialto bridge and the markets make this area an attraction for visitors.  Traditionally, this was a commercial center for bankers and brokers. It is now a market area. It has fish markets (pescheria) and fruit markets (erberia). The Rialto bridge (from rivo alto high bank) is a major entrance way into Venice over the Grand Canal and it begins in this district.
Dorsoduro	This district is named after the stratum or subsoil on which it stands - dorsoduro (hard back).  The settlement was founded by fishermen who were fleeing the Germanic Lombards during the first half of the millennium.  The Dogana del Mare (the customs house) is located here.
Santa Croce	This district was named after the church of Santa Croce.  This district lies north of San Polo.  Both Santa Croce and San Polo are traversed by the grand canal.
San Marco	This is the home of the political and the judicial centers of Venice.  It remains as the center of Venetian life.  The area is the home to the Spanish and Austrian Embassies.  The greatest attraction, however, is the Piaza San Marco.  It was originally conceived of as a place for the palace of the duke (Palazzo Duccale) and the neighboring Basilica de San Marco.  It is the only sacred space that merits the name of a Piazza (plaza).  The others are called campi (fields).
Castello	This is the largest siestieri in the city.  It stretches from San Marco in the West to Sant’Elena in the East.  The name of this district comes from the 8th century fortress that once stood there. The industrial hub of the district was the Arsenale where the great shipyard produced the indomitable fleet of warships for the republic (Lane, 1973). The fortress of San Pietro soon became a church, San Pietro.  It was here that St. Peter was said to have heard an angel make a prophecy about the new Rome.

 

The Venetian Lagoon

There are many islands in the lagoon.  Some of them are well known whereas others remain in obscurity.   Here are some of cultural landscapes of the Venetian archipelago:

 

Lagoons of Venice

Venice lies within a lagoon that is surrounded by other islands.  Each has its own history and its own points of interest.  Murano is among the most interesting of these islands.  It is known for glass making.  Burano is noted for its delicate laces.  San Michele serves as the cemetery for the region.

The City-State of Venice

During the Middle Ages, most of Europe was under a feudal system in which every thing centered around a royal family and its needs.  Families did not have unique identifies.  There were named in accordance with their function within a feudal manor.  What the father of a peasant did, so would his son do.  Their names told of their functions:  hall, porter, green, shoemaker, cartwright, wheelwright, cook, and so on.  When the emperors and popes sought a new form of government, they looked to city-states for guidance.  They knew of the success of such city-states of Rome and Athens and they looked back to the ancients for political and civil guidance.  Such was the beginning of the Renaissance, the rebirth of Europe during the Middle Ages. 

There were three city-states in Italy that are worth mentioning because they marshaled in the Renaissance.  They were Milan, Florence, and Venice.  Each was independent of both the empire and the church. Venice and Florence were two centers of power and wealth that became the cradle of the Renaissance.  Florence, the city of flowers, did well in textiles and banking.  Equally important was Venice.  It was founded in the fifth century by people fleeing from Attila the Hun. They settled on a group of islands on the northeastern edge of the Italian peninsula where shipbuilding was the primary industry.   During the Crusades, Venetian ships provided transportation to the Holy Land. By the 13th century, Venice was the most prosperous city in Europe. The city became rich by collecting taxes on all merchandise brought into its harbor. Venice built huge warships that protected the valuable cargo of its merchant ships from pirate raids. With the vast wealth from trade, many of the leading families of Venice vied with one another to build the finest palaces or support the work of the greatest artists (Braudel, 1933). 

Once the new city-states of Europe were developed, the focus was on a battle between the moderns and the ancients.  The moderns felt that enough was known about the city-states of the past and it was time to focus on the present and the future.  The ancients wanted to dwell on the past.  They wanted to model their cities to mirror the achievements of Rome and Athens.  They copied its art, it architecture, and its forms of governing.  Many of the problems characteristically associated with modernity go back to this time.  For example, bureaucracies were established during this time and they continue to rule modern systems of governance.  The rise of the first industrial revolution began at this time and its patterns were repeated and augmented during the second industrial revolutions in France and England. The rise of the bourgeoisie that Marx (1905) complained about grew out of these city-state infrastructures.  The rise of science (the moderns) developed during this period and so did the shift from art as copying nature to art are the re-presentation of an event.  In other words, the present was re-presented and codified in a different way thereby creating a new art form.  Much of modernity is immersed in a world of re-presentations, and simulacra.

The Carnival Tradition

The Carnival in Venice is said to have originated in 1162 when Venice fought against Ulrico, the Patriarch of Aquileia, and won.  They celebrated this victory with dancing and costumes at San Marco Square. Much of the tradition of the carnival in Venice is associated with the Commedia dell'Arte (the Italian theater).  In the second half of the 16th century, theater plays were classic, stylish, cold and rigorous. The Commedia dell’Arte was a reaction to these plays.  It emerged as something opposite t it.  In the Commedia, one found actors who were loud and colorful.  What began in this reaction to tradition took on a life of its own and new forms of the Commedia dell;Arte flourished throughout Italy.  This is what one finds in the Carnival of Venice. It uses free improvisation on stage that are not codified in the formality of the old theater. The masks that one sees in the Carnival were used by actors who improvised and created new roles in the public streets and plazas. 

Venetian Mascaras

In 1608, the Council of Ten issued a decree that forbade citizens from wearing masks in public with two exceptions, during the Carnival and during official banquets. The decree was modified and soon masks were worn at other events.  The Carnival in Venice is a time when wore such masks.  It was a time for releasing oneself from stringent rules and to engage in the re-creation of self.  There were many masks that were used for different occasions. 

moretta	This is a black velvet oval mask normally worn by women when they visited convents. It was a mute mask with a small button that was used to prevent speech.
mascareri	These were masks used by painters who were assisted by targheri who painted faces of all kinds on these masks.
bauta	This was the most widely used mask.  It involved a mantle that was dropped over the shoulders and dropped down to the waist. On their heads were tricorno (a three-cornered hat).  The face of the mask was white in the summer and black in the winter.

In renaissance Venice, the carnival has been a significant element in both civic and commercial life of the city. It is the most temporally extended and socially inclusive of the many public events that regularly punctuate the annual calendar of the city and which deploy architecture and landscape to generate civic solidarity. Renaissance Venice is the paradigmatic city of spectacular civic ritual, and its urban landscape has consistently been read and represented as theater. During the carnival, highly choreographed public display demands the widest possible participation, incorporating both citizens and visitors through a series of overlapping allegiances. Regular procession and spectacle bound together the entire community, in rehearsing the political and moral order of the city. They celebrate and reproduce the Venetian sense of place, of Venice as a complete and perfect world. This proud sense of place is architecturally inscribed above all at the political heart of the city: the great stage setting of the Piazza di San Marco and it surrounding buildings (Cosgrove, 1997). This urban design is, in fact, an eclectic assemblage of architectural styles. It provides a vast setting in which more than a third of the city’s population could gather to participate in celebrations of the spirit of the city. 

Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a Venetian trader and explorer who gained fame for his travels into China which he described in his book Oriente Polo (The Travels of Marco Polo).  While still a child, he traveled with his father (Nicolò) and his uncle Maffió and his elder brother (Marco, il vecchio) along the Silk Road to China.  This family of traders left Venice for Constantinople in an effort to improve their situation.  They again decided to relocate and moved their business in 1259 to Soldaia, a city in Crimea.  This decision proved to be a wise one because Constantinople recaptured in 1261.  The Venetian quarter there was burned and the captured citizens were blinded by the new ruler of the empire.  Their new location on the north rim of the Black Sea became part of the Mongol state known as the Golden Horde.  The political situation in Soldaia was also precarious and this group further east to Bukhara which is now Uzbekistan.  After spending three years in this area, Nicolo and Maffio Polo joined up with the brother of the Great Khan and they set out to Khanbaliq which is present day Beijing.  They took the northern route through the Gobi dessert and arrived in the new capital Beijing in 1260.  Niccolo and Maffeo both spoke Turkic dialects perfectly and they befriended Kublai Khan who learned about the West.  He sent them back to Europe with a letter in Turkic asking Pope Clement IV to send 100 scholars to teach his people about western science and Christianity.  To assist and protect the Polo family on their journey, the Great Khan gave them a golden table (paiza)  that acted as a special VIP passport that authorized the travelers to receive the food and supplies needed for their journey.  It took them 3 years to make the journey and they returned home in 1269.

 

 

Marco Polo

 
Marco Polo was only a child of six years in age during his first journey to China and he was 15 years old when they returned to Venice.  When he was 17 years old, he returned to China.  His return trip took him to the southern Caucus and the kingdom of Georgia and then along the shores of the Caspian Sea and then north towards the Gobi dessert.  In 1275, he arrived at the capital of the Kublai Khan.  After spending 17 years in China, he acquired great wealth in the form of jewels and gold.  He was anxious to return home as he feared that the Kublai Khan was getting into his seventies and would not be able to protect him if the Great Khan died.  Marco Polo was able to return to Europe ifhe escorted a Mongl princess on her journey to marry a Persian prince.  The journey was by sea and it took two years from the South China Sea, Sumatra, the Indian Ocean and the final destination of Hormuz. 

Three years after Marco Polo returned to Venice, he found himself commanding a galley in a battle between Venice and Genoa.  He was captured and sent to prison. While incarcerated, he met a romance writer Rusticello di Pisa who convinced him to have his memoirs published.  Marco Polo told of his exploits and Rusticello wrote them down.  The result was a book on the travels of Marco Polo.  It became one of the most popular books in medieval Europe.  It was the most important account of the outside world to Europe available at the time.  The book became the most influential traveloque on the Silk Road ever written in a European language.  This geographical event was doubted by many of the people who read the book. 

Other Famous Venetians

There are many other noted scholars, composers, artists, and personalities from Venice that are worth mentioning.  Giacomo Casanova, for example, did exist.  He was born in 1725 and he was an irresistible seductor.  Another Venetian was Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516), who was a Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of painters.  He was the founder of the Venetian School of Painting and it was because of his work that Venice was raised a center of Renaissance art.  This rebirth, as noted earlier, a return to ancient philosophy, literature, and art.  It was a time when the city-states of Milan, Florence, and Venice provided new models of government that transcended the feudal system that dominated most of Europe.  Renaissance art had to do with the revival of the art of antiquity.  It was an attempt to recreate classical art.  One of the great painter of the Venetian School was Tintoretto (1518-1594).  He was probably the last great painter of Italian Renaissance.  Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was a famous composer and violinist of the Baroque Era. Every year there is a Vivaldi festival in Venice.  These are just a few of the noted people of culture that Venice has produced. 

The Sinking of Venice

The buildings of Venice are constructed on wooden piles.  These piles are closely spaced and driven into alternating layers of sand and clay.  One would think that these wooden piles would decay but such is not the case. Underwater, thee piles do not decay because they are not in contact with oxygen.  Hence, most of the piles are intact after six centuries of submersion. 

The sinking of Venice can be connected to certain events.  During the 20th century, many artesian wells were drilled along the periphery of the lagoon in order to draw water for the local industries.  One of the consequences of this drilling of artesian wells was that the extraction of the aquifer led to the sinking of Venice.  Once the city officials were aware of this connection in 1960, they banned the process drilling process.  There has been discussion about reversing the drilling process by filling the aquifers with salt water.  Many see this as a temporary solution because not only is Venice sinking, but the ocean tides are rising (Keahey, 2002). 

One way of countering the rising tides in Venice has been suggested by modern scientists at MIT in a project that they call MOSE (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico).  They envision placing large flood gates at the three inlets (Lido, Malamocco, and Chiggia) along the lagoon surrounding the city. The lagoon is separated from the Adriatic Sea by a strip of long and narrow barrier islands.  When the tides are higher than normal, water surges into the lagoon inlets and flood the city.  Project MOSE is meant to control the flow of water into the lagoon at these three inlets. Many oppose this project and fear that it will destroy the ecosystem (Lassere and Marzollo, 2000). 

These flood gates are to be placed at the three inlets along the lagoon.  These gates would open up when the tides are high and remain closed when the tides are low.  There are 79 flood gates proposed in Project MOSE.

The flooding of Venice is a serious problem.  At one time, Venice was a thriving community of 250,000 people but today only 60,000 inhabitants remain. 

Concluding Remarks

Venice was the paradigm merchant capital city of the pre-modern age. Its landscape, through architecture, ritual, and painting, both expressed and legitimated its economic life, social cohesion, and political order. By the late sixteenth century, the rise of the Atlantic economies as the organizing core of a world system, the European struggles over reformed and individualist Christianity, the scientific and technological revolution, and the adoption of new conceptions of space and time were intensely felt in Venice and debated among its intellectual and patrician class (Cosgrove, 1993). Thus, Venice’s landscape offers an insight into struggles over representation in the period of transition to the modern period.

Venice has always been a special place.  It was one of the richest cities in Europe during the Middle Ages because it controlled the spice trade from Asia into Europe.  After the discovery of trade routes by the Portuguese, this advantage was lost. Venice played a major role in the Crusades as a staging area and as a supplier of ships for the mercantile trade.  As a city-state, Venice provided leadership for other parts of Europe that were looking for alternative to feudal systems of government.  Along with Florence and Milan, they brought on the genesis of modernity in all of its manifestations. 
Today, Venice remains as a charming spectacle for tourists.  However, Venetians see themselves as more than a spectacle.  They continue to provide the world with annual musical and art festivals that celebrate their genius.  The study of the cultural space of Venice in this chapter differs in many ways from other investigations of public space.  For example, Kevin Lynch (1960) developed a model in which he could study how people navigate and locate themselves in the city.  His concepts are useful and they are used in this book.  Paths, he noted, are the channels along which moves within the public space of the city.  The major path discussed in this work is the one that takes an individual from the church of San Marco to the Rialto Bridge.  Along this path, there are edges.  Lynch considers these to be boundaries that are perceived observers as they move along a path.  In the case of the aforementioned path, the edges constitute the shorelines that one encounters at the church of St. Mark and at the Rialto Bridge.  The walls of the building along that path also form edges.  The beginning of the path and its endpoint are nodes, strategic spots within the city.  Both are clearly marked by street signs and tourist maps.  The districts, another concept by Lynch that has to do with the image of the city, have already been discussed earlier in this chapter. Finally, the church of St. Mark is a landmark in that it is a clearly identifiable object that one cannot fully enter.  Fabrio Carrera (1997), a doctoral candidate of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT has used the concepts of paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks in his study of Venice.  His focus was on the Campo Santa Maria Formosa.  He wanted to create a more dynamic model of the public space of Venice. 

The study of cultural spaces is concerned with public space, but in a different way.  It sees the city as a cultural event.  One side of this event has to do with the organization of cultural knowledge and constitutes a theory of the city.  The other side of this event has to do with the ontological markings within the city.  It has to do with physical entities that exist within the city.  The connection between the epistemology and the ontology of the city is manifested by a reality-loop, a bonding of meanings and forms.  From the perspective of a tourist in Venice, the cultural space of that city is a first time event in which a tour guide discusses the ontological markers and assists the tourist to make meaningful connections.  Fabrio Carrera (1997) is from Venice.  It is his home town.  As a life long resident, he has a very different concept of the epistemology and the ontology of that city.  His reality-loops are far more complex.  He wants to share these experiences of his native city with others. In essence, he wants to create a phenomenology of the city in order to share his personal experiences of Venice with others.  Such deep and complex cultural spaces are difficult to share with outsiders to the cultural region.  For example, it is something that a tourist would find extremely difficult to embody.  A tourist would not be able to experience the reality-loops that Carrera wishes to externalize. 

The study of cultural spaces provides the foundations for further investigations on the meaning of the city.  It can provide historical information about a region, urban patterns, information on music and the arts, and an understanding of the archeology of knowledge that constitutes the cultural space of the region.  It has its limitations, however, in trying to convey information that relate to phenomenological experiences.  It is not that such experiences are not accessible but that they are too complex to relate as reality-loops.   

 

References

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Cultural Spaces of Venice

St. Clair, Robert and Song, Wei. (2009). The Many Layers of Culture within each City: A Theory of Cultural Geography. Edwin Mellen Press.