VENICE

square black hardcover ~ 2º 4to ~ 4º (quarto). large book (8"x8"). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. fine cond. binding square & tight. covers clean. edges clean. contents free of markings. dustwrapper in fine cond. small tear on front, not price clipped (no price listed). nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking, underlining, remainder markings etc~. first edition. first printing (NAP). 2 color title pg. 249p. glossy pages throughout. 203 glossy photos & illustrations, many full page, some in color. 9 intinerary b&w maps at rear with numbered sites listed. world history. history of italy. medieval history. renaissance history. art history. ~Venice: "most noble and singular city", "triumphant city", "unique in the world". Enthusiastic adjectives have been employed in her description, a vast literature on the subject of this city is now in existence. A great deal of what has been written fastens on 1797 ~ the year of the fall of the "Most Serene Republic" ~ as an emblematic date signifying a traumatic rupture between a "before" whose nobility and magnifence is praised, and an "after" in which by contrast only decline and uneasiness are perceived. This literature, along with the stereotyped pictures that we come across every day, is still under the influence of the Romantic tradition of the 19th century and of the myth of the "death of Venice". In this brief historical sketch an attempt is made to outline a different approach to more than a thousand years of history of the city that through antonomasia came to be known as the "Dominante". It seeks first of all the prerequisites that permitted the assertion of the growing naval and commercial power of the inhabitants of the Rialto archipelago, and then the causes of the grandiose and impetuous growth of trade on the routes of the East, due in part to her "singular government" and to the particular economic and social formation that the Republic gave to herself and that is the true key to understanding the lasting power of the "Queen of the Adriatic". Her slow decline was of course partly determined by external factors, such as the opening up of new transoceanic trade routes and the assertion of the great nation states in the 16th century, but also, and perhaps in a more decisive manner, by internal causes which are identified above all in the sclerosis of a social structure which did not allow the replacement of ruling classes that was required in order to deal with the "new world". The "fall of the Republic", the inevitable outcome of this decline is nothing but an obligatory stage in the descending parabola of Venice, but this is effectively resisted, before and after, when the remedies proposed set the city in search of a new and different identity. It is not really a question of a debate over historical interpretations, simply because history cannot merely serve for the study of what has been in order perhaps to make it the object of romantic regret: the connection between past and present is important above all in the understanding of the processes of the present day. Venice is in need, as is said today, of a "productive reconversion", which would exploit the potentialities of her historic function as centre of cultural and commercial mediation, thus restoring vigour to the fabric of her economy and consequently permitting the maintenance of her social fabric in all its rich variety. Nor can the "monumental restoration" set itself the unique objective of preserving, in an immense museum consecrated to tourism, the testimony of the "triumphant city" as seen through the eyes of admiring travellers in the 16th century. At the same time the exploitation of the city for tourism also has to change: precisely because Venice is an unrepeatable "unicum" it is not sufficient to fuel the myth of a few places delegated to its representation. For this reason the final part of the book gives space to a series of itinerar.…