Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Traders & Traitors
Like its signature Basilica di San Marco, the Venetian empire was dazzlingly cosmopolitan.
Venice turned arrivals from every nation and creed into trading partners with a common
credo: as long as everyone was making money, cultural boundaries need not apply. Armeni-
ans, Turks, Greeks and Germans became neighbours along the Grand Canal, and Jewish
and Muslim refugees and other groups widely persecuted in Europe settled into established
communities in Venice.
Commerce provided a common bond. At the height of Venice's maritime prowess, 300
shipbuilding companies in the Arsenale had 16,000 employees. By the mid-15th century,
Venice's maritime ventures had left the city swathed in golden mosaics, rustling silks and
incense to cover mucky summer smells that were the downsides of a lagoon empire. In case
of trade disputes or feuds among neighbours, La Serenissima retained its calm through a
complex political system of checks, balances and elections, with the doge as the executive
presiding over council matters.
Yet inside the red-velvet cloak of its ruling elite, Venice was hiding an iron hand.
Venice's shadowy secret service, the Consiglio dei Dieci (Council of Ten), thwarted con-
spiracies by deploying Venetian James Bonds throughout Venice and major European cap-
itals. Venice had no qualms about spying on its own citizens to ensure a balance of power,
and trials, torture and executions were carried out in secret. Still, compared with its neigh-
bours at the time, Venice remained a haven of tolerance.
Occasionally, the Council made examples of lawbreakers. Denunciations of wrongdoers
were nailed to the door of the Palazzo Ducale and published by Venice's presses - and
when that failed to convey the message, the Council of Ten ordered the bludgeoning or de-
capitation of those found guilty of crimes against the doge. Severed heads were placed atop
columns outside the Palazzo Ducale and sundry parts distributed for display in the
sestieri
(neighbourhoods) for exactly three nights and four days, until they started to smell.
Director Luchino Visconti takes on Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann's story of a Mahler-esque composer,
an infatuation and a deadly outbreak in
Death in Venice
(1971).
