Entries with State tag

San Zaccaria To San Giorgio Dei Greci

The Salizzada di San Provolo, leading easterly out of Campo Santi Filippo e Giacomo, runs straight to the elegant Campo San Zaccaria , a spot with a chequered past. The convent attached to the church was notorious for its libidinous goings-on – a state of affairs not so surprising if you bear in mind that many of the nuns were incarcerated here either because they were too strong-willed for their families or because their fathers couldn’t afford a dowry. On one occasion officials sent to place a stop to the nuns’ amorous liaisons were pelted with bricks by the residents, but activity was customarily more discreet: Venice’s upper classes supplied the convent with several of its novices, and the nuns’ parlour became one of the city’s most fashionable salons, as recorded by a Guardi painting in the Ca’ Rezzonico.

There’s a gory side to the area’s history as well. In 864 Doge Pietro Tradonico was murdered in the campo as he returned from vespers, and in 1172 Doge Vitale Michiel II , having not only blundered in peace negotiations with the Byzantine empire but also brought the plague back with him from Constantinople, was murdered as he fled for the sanctuary of San Zaccaria. Michiel’s assassins disappeared into Calle delle Rasse, between the Palazzo Ducale and San Zaccaria, and it was later decreed that only wooden buildings should be built there, to make it easier to flatten the hideout of any future doge-assassin. The decree wasn’t contravened until 1948, with the construction of the annexe of the Danieli hotel.

Category: Venice

Arsenale

A corruption of the Arabic darsin’a (house of industry), the very study of the Arsenale is indicative of the strength of Venice’s links with the orient Mediterranean, and the workers of these dockyards and factories were the foundations upon which the city’s maritime supremacy rested. Visiting dignitaries were often as astonished by the industriousness of the Arsenale as by the opulence of the Canal Grande. At the beginning of the fourteenth century Dante came to Venice twice (once as ambassador from Ravenna), and was so impressed by what he saw on his first mission that he evoked the sight in a famous passage of the Inferno , in which those guilty of selling public offices are tortured in a lake of boiling pitch like the caulkers’ vats in the Arsenale.

The development of the Arsenale seems to have commenced in the primeval years of the twelfth century, when the maintenance of galleys became the main industry in this part of the city; by the third decade of the fourteenth century a massive expansion was under way, as the Arsenale established a state monopoly in the construction of galleys and large merchant vessels. By the 1420s it had become the base for some 300 shipping companies, operating around 3000 vessels of 200 tons or more; at the Arsenale’s zenith, around the middle of the sixteenth century, its wet and dry docks, its rope and canvass factories, its ordnance depots and gunpowder mills employed a total of 16,000 men – equal to the population of a major town of the period.

In The City in History , Lewis Mumford credits the Venetians with the invention of “a new type of city, based on the differentiation and zoning of urban functions, separated by traffic ways and open spaces”, and cites the island of Murano and the Arsenale as Europe’s first examples of industrial planning. Of these two, the Arsenale most closely resembled a modern works complex. Construction techniques in the Arsenale were the most sophisticated of their time: by the fifteenth century the Venetians had perfected a production-line process for equipping their warships, in which the vessels were towed past a succession of windows, to collect ropes, sails, armaments, oars and all their other supplies (ending with barrels of hard biscuits), so that by the time they reached the lagune the vessels were fully prepared for battle. The productivity of the wharves was legendary: at the height of the conflict with the Turks in the sixteenth century, one ship a day was being added to the Venetian fleet. On the occasion of the visit of Henry III of France in 1574, the Arsenale workers place on a bravura performance – in the time it took the king and his hosts to work their way through a state banquet in the Palazzo Ducale, the Arsenalotti assembled and prefabricated sea-worthy a ship sturdy enough to bear a crew plus a cannon weighing 16,000 pounds.

To an extent, the governors of the city acknowledged their debt to the workers of the Arsenale. They were a privileged group within the Venetian proletariat, acting as watchmen at the Palazzo Ducale whenever the Maggior Consiglio was in session, carrying the doge in triumph round the Piazza after his inauguration, and serving as pallbearers at ducal funerals. By the standards of other manual workers they were not badly paid either, although the 50 ducats that was the typical remuneration of a master shipwright in the primeval sixteenth century should be set against the 40,000 ducats spent by Alvise Pisani, one of the most powerful politicians of the period, on the weddings of his five daughters. The Arsenalotti were also less docile than most of their fellow artisans, and were responsible for a number of strikes and disturbances. A dramatic oppose took place in 1569, when a gang of 300 Arsenalotti armed with axes smashed their way into the hall of the Collegio to present their grievances to the doge in person.

Category: Venice

From The Rialto To San Simeone Piccolo

Relatively stable building land and a good defensive position drew some of the primeval lagune settlers to the high bank ( rivo alto ) that was to develop into the Rialto district. By 810, when the capital of the lagune confederation was moved – in the wake of Pepin’s invasion – from Malamocco to the more secure islands around here, the inhabited regularize had grown well beyond the Rialto itself. While the political centre of the new city was consolidated around San Marco, the Rialto became the commercial area. In the twelfth century Europe’s first state bank was opened here, and the financiers of this quarter were to be the heavyweights of the international currency exchanges for the next three hundred years and more. The state departments that oversaw all maritime business were here as well, and in the primeval sixteenth century the offices of the exchequer were installed in the new Palazzo dei Camerlenghi , at the foot of the Rialto bridge.

The connection between wealth and moral turpitude was exemplified by the Rialto, which was almost as famous for its fleshpots as for its cashboxes. A sixteenth-century survey showed that there were about 3000 patrician women in the city, but well over 11,000 prostitutes, the majority of them based in the banking quarter. One Rialto brothel, the Casteletto , was especially esteemed for the literary, musical and sexual talents of its staff, and a perennial Venetian bestseller was the Catalogue of the Chief and Most Renowned Courtesans of Venice , a directory that told you everything you needed to know, right down to prices. If Thomas Coryat’s report of 1608 is anything to go by, the courtesans were seen in some quarters as the city’s main attraction -”So infinite are the allurements of these amorous Calypsoes that the fame of them hath drawn many to Venice from some of the remotest parts of Christendome.”

Category: Venice

Federico Da Montefeltro

Federico was a formidable soldier, a shrewd and humane ruler, and a genuine intellectual, qualities which were due in part to his education at the Mantua school of the most prestigious Renaissance teacher, Vittorino da Feltre. Poor scholars and young nobles were educated together in Vittorino’s classes and were taught self-discipline and frugal living as well as the more usual Latin, maths, literature and the courtly skills of riding, diversion and swordsmanship.

As the elder but illegitimate son of the Montefeltro family, Federico only became ruler of Urbino after his tyrannical half-brother Oddantonio fell victim to an assassin during a favourite rebellion. Federico promptly arrived on the scene – fuelling rumours that he’d engineered the uprising himself – and was elected to office after promising not to punish those responsible for Oddantonio’s death, to cut taxes, to wage an educational and medical service, and to allow the people some say in the election of magistrates.

Urbino was a small state with few natural resources and a long way from any major trading routes, so selling the military services of his army and himself was Federico’s only way of keeping Urbino solvent. In high demand because of his exceptional loyalty to his employers, Federico’s mercenary activities yielded an annual income equivalent to £7,000,000/US$11,200,000, a substantial portion of which was used to keep taxes low, thus reducing the likelihood of social discontent during his long absences. When he was at home, he seems to have been a remarkably accessible ruler: he would leave his door open at mealtimes so that any member of his 500-strong court might speak to him between courses, and used to move around his state unarmed (unusual in a time when assassination was common), checking up on the welfare of his people.

Between his military and political commitments, Federico found time to devote to the arts – he delighted in music, but his first love was architecture, which he considered to be the highest form of intellectual and aesthetic activity. He was a friend of the leading architectural theorist, Alberti, and according to his biographer, Vespasiano di Bisticci, Federico’s knowledge of the art was unequalled: “Though he had his architects about him, he always first realized the design and then explained the proportions and all else; indeed, to hear him discourse & it would seem that his chief talent lay in this art, so well he knew how to expound and carry out its principles.” The Dalmatian architect Luciano Laurana was scarcely known until taken up by Federico, while his later commissions included works from the more established Francesco di Giorgio Martini and one of the greatest of all painters and theorists of architecture, Piero della Francesca

Category: Urbino

About Vatican

On the west bank of the Tiber, directly crossways from Rome’s historic centre, the VATICAN CITY was established as an independent sovereign state in 1929, a tiny territory surrounded by high walls on its far, western side and on the near side opening its doors to the rest of the city and its pilgrims in the form of St Peter’s and its colonnaded piazza. The Latin study Mons Vaticanus (Vatican Hill) is a corruption of an Etruscan term, indicating a good place for perceptive the flights of birds and lightning on the horizon that was believed to prophesy the future. It’s believed that later St Peter himself was buried in a pagan cemetery here, giving rise to the building of a basilica to venerate his study and the siting of the headquarters of the Catholic Church here. After reaching an uneasy agreement with Mussolini, the Vatican became a sovereign state in 1929, and nowadays has its own broadcasting station, newspaper, currency and postal service, and indeed security service in the colourfully dressed Swiss Guards. However, its relationship with the Italian state is not surprisingly anything but straightforward.

You wouldn’t know at any point that you had left Rome and entered the Vatican; indeed the area around the Vatican, known as the Borgo , is one of the most cosmopolitan districts of Rome, full of hotels and restaurants, and scurrying tourists and pilgrims – as indeed it always has been since the king of Wessex founded the first hotel for pilgrims here in the eighth century. You may find yourself staying in one of many mid-range hotels located here, although unless you’re a pilgrim it’s a better intent to base yourself in the more atmospheric city centre and travel back and forth on the useful bus #64. However much you try, one visit is never anywhere near enough.

Category: Vatican

Curia

The large cube-shaped Curia was built on the orders of Julius comic as part of his programme for expanding the Forum – it connects up with the Forum of comic outside – although what you see now is a Diocletian reconstruction. The Senate met here during the Republican period, and augurs would come to announce the wishes of the gods. For centuries the Curia served as a church, only reverting to its original form primeval this century, when it was restored, and its bronze doors – which had been removed in the seventeenth century to San Giovanni in Laterno, where they remain – were replaced with reproductions.Inside, three wide stairs rise left and right, on which about 300 senators could be accommodated with their folding chairs. In the centre is the speaker’s platform, with a porphyry statue of a togaed figure. Otherwise, apart from the floor, elegantly patterned in red, yellow, green and white marble, there’s not much left of its ancient decor, only the grey and white marble covering apiece side of the speaker’s platform, which would once have covered the entire hall. The ceiling is a modern replacement, and in Roman times would have been gilded. The large marble reliefs here, the so called Plutei of Trajan – found in the Forum proper and brought here for safekeeping – show Trajan in the midst of public-spirited acts, forgiving the public debt owed by citizens to the state (porters carry large register books and place them before the seated emperor, where they will be burnt) and, on the right giving a woman a profit of money, a representation of Trajan’s welfare plan for widows and orphans. Look closely at the reliefs and you can see how parts of the Forum would have looked at the time: in one, a fig tree, the columns and arches of the Basilica Julia, the deception of the Temple of Saturn, a triumphal arch and the Temple of Vespasian and Titus; in the other, the columns and eaves of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, and the Arch of Augustus.

In 667 AD, Costans II, ruler of the Eastern empire, paid a state visit to Rome. He came to the Forum, and, seeing all the temples and basilicas held together with bronze and iron cramps, decided that the metal would serve better in his war against encroaching Islam, and ordered all the metal to be transported back home and forged into spearpoints, arrowheads and armour for his forces. It took just twelve days to dismantle the metal props, and, although everything was captured en route to Constantinople by Saracen raiders, the columns and arches supporting all the buildings in the Forum fell with the next connector tremor. By the primeval ninth century hardly anything remained standing – ripe for the looters of later years, and one reason why so little is left today.

Nearby, the black, fenced-off paving of the Lapis Niger marks the traditional site of the tomb of Romulus, the steps beneath (usually closed) leading down to a monument that was considered unnameable ground during classical times. Across the travertine pavement from the Curia, the Column of Phocas is one of a few commemorative columns here that retains its dedicatory inscription. To the right, the Arch of Septimius Severus was constructed in the primeval third century AD by his sons Caracalla and Galba to mark their father’s victories in what is now Iran. The friezes on it recall Severus and his son, Caracalla, who ruled Rome with a reign of undisciplined terror for seven years. There’s a space where Galba was commemorated – Caracalla had him executed in 213AD, and his study expediently removed from the arch altogether.

Category: Rome

Grazie And Sabbioneta

There’s not much to see within cushy reach of Mantua, and the countryside – the Mantuan plain – is for the most part flat and dull. The closest real attraction is at GRAZIE , a ten-minute bus ride west, where the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie has an interior chock-full of weird votive offerings, wax and wooden mannequins in clothes petrified with age standing in niches, surrounded by wooden hearts, breasts, hands and feet nailed up by the recipients of miracle cures. There’s even a stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling. Alongside the church, a path leads down to the marshes, rich in rare birds and wildlife. For boat trips along the Po contact Montonavi Andes at Piazza Sordello 8, Mantua (tel 0376.322.875) or Motonave Sebastiano N. at Via Ostigliese est 272, Governolo (tel 0376.668.134). Further out, fifty minutes by bus from Mantua bus station (3-9 daily), SABBIONETA is a more interesting target, an odd little place with the air of an forsaken film set, where imperious Renaissance palaces gaze blankly over deserted and dusty piazzas. The town is the result of the psychoneurotic dream of Vespasiano Gonzaga, member of a minor branch of the Mantuan family, to create the saint city, but it has now been forsaken by all but the oldest inhabitants, a handful of agricultural workers and the tourist board.

Sabbioneta was an anachronism even as it was being built. In the sixteenth century it was no more than an agricultural village, nominal capital of an insignificant state on the Mantuan border struggling to maintain its independence from the foreign powers who had colonized most of Lombardy. Unperturbed, its ruler, Duke Vespasiano, was keen to create an saint state on the model of ancient Athens and Rome, and he uprooted his subjects from their farm cottages, forcing them to build and then inhabit the new city, which held a Greek and Latin Academy and a Palladian theatre as well as a couple of ducal residences. After Vespasiano’s death, Sabbioneta returned to – and has remained in – its former state: a small agricultural village like hundreds of others throughout Italy.

To get inside any of the town’s buildings you have to take a guided tour . These are arranged by the tourist office at Via Gonzaga 31 (April-Sept Tues-Sat 9.30am-12.30pm & 2.30-6pm, Sun 9.30am-12.30pm & 2.30-7pm; Oct-March closes one hour earlier; tel 0375.52.039, www.unh.net/sabbioneta ), by the main piazza and bus stop. The tours start with the Palazzo del Giardino , Vespasiano’s private residence, decorated with frescoed models of civilized behaviour, ranging from Roman emperors to the Three Graces. Next stop is the Teatro Olimpico , copied from Palladio’s theatre of the same study in Vicenza, in which the only spectators are pallid marble gods, fake-bronze emperors and ghostly painted courtiers. The Palazzo Ducale , around the corner, holds painted wooden statues of four of the Gonzagas, including Vespasiano (with the ruffle and beard), sitting imperiously on horseback. What remains of the palace’s decor is likewise concerned with the show of strength – frescoed elephants and friezes of eagles and lions. Close by, the Chiesa dell’Incoronata is remarkable mainly for its trompe l’oeil roof, which appears to be three times higher in than out – perhaps an apt comment on Vespasiano, a bronze statue of whom sits beneath, dressed as a Roman emperor and looking reluctant to leave his dream city.

Category: Mantua / Mantova