Historical Information on Venice, Italy
At the fall of the Roman Empire barbarian hordes descended from the north
of Europe, bringing death and destruction. The inhabitants of the Venetian
cities, to escape from the ferocity of the Huns and Vandals, took refuge in the
islands of the adriatic lagoon: thus it was that around 450 A.D. Venice, Italy was
born. The "City of Islands" was subjected to Byzantine influence and governed by
a duke, or Doge, elected by a popular assembly. Wise use of diplomacy and arms
soon led to Venice taking control of the coasts of Istria, Dalmatia and Puglia and to becoming a true power, increasingly independent of Byzantium.
The splendor of what came to be called the Serenissima Republic, however, only began in 1202, when the Doge Enrico Dandolo furnished important help to the knights of the fourth Crusade in the conquest of Constantinople. From the division of the Byzantine spoils, the Serenissima gained immense riches, allowing it to expand its own commercial horizons: its ships dominated the Mediterranean as far as the Middle East and returned to the lagoons laden with precious merchandise not found in Europe.
Mystery and charm, beauty and atmosphere, Venice reached the heights of its 
power at the beginning of the fifteenth century, after defeating the
Duke of Milan and conquering many cities of northeastern Italy, becoming
along with Milan and Florence one of the principal powers of the Italian
peninsula. From this time began the slow but inexorable descending spiral of the
Serenissima. The Turks conquered the Venetian colonies in the Middle East
one by one, while at the end of the century the Portuguese, circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope, opened a new route to the Indies,
taking from the Venetians commercial primacy in those areas.
The final blazing military victory was that of Lepanto, in 1571, against the Turkish fleet. Then the descent became unstoppable. In
1797 Venice lost its independence. It was conquered by Napoleon Bonaparte who successively ceded it to the Austrians. The Serenissima
Republic didn't exist any more. Only seventy years later, in 1866, the Venetian
territories would become part of the emerging Kingdom of Italy.
Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance are the principal reference points for the
artistic development of Venice. The Byzantine style characterized the first
centuries of the city. Marbles and columns arrived from the Middle East at the
lagoon city, where projects for the construction of the first great buildings
were directed by masters from the East and from Ravenna. The Basilica of San Marco is a masterpiece of Romanesque-Byzantine style, the center of Venetian life
for all times. Today few buildings remain from that period and their locations
demonstrate clearly the early lines of the city's development: from San Marco
to Rialto and, along the borders of the Grand Canal, from San Zan Degolà
to San Polo. Beginning in the second half of the thirteenth century the Gothic style affirmed itself in Venice, as it did in the rest of Italy's cities.
Among its most vivid testimonies are the Doge's Palace and the Ca' d'Oro (House
of Gold). In the sixteenth century the Renaissance style left a strong imprint (Rialto Bridge), followed by Baroque, Rococo and
Neoclassical. Throughout the city the testimonies of great Venetian masters
are revealed in paintings from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.