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Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City
A sweeping and comprehensive history of Venice--from its formation in the early Middle Ages to the present day--that traces its evolution as a city, city-state, regional power, and overseas empire.
No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, "another world." During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was celebrated as a model republic in an age of monarchs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became famous for its freewheeling lifestyle characterized by courtesans, casinos, and Carnival. When the city fell on hard times following the collapse of the Republic in 1797, a darker vision of Venice as a place of decay, disease, and death took hold. Today tourists from around the globe flock to the world heritage site as rising sea levels threaten its very foundations.
This comprehensive account reveals the adaptations to its geographic setting that have been a constant feature of living on water from Venice's origins to the present. It examines the lives of the women and men, noble and common, rich and poor, Christian, Jew, and Muslim, who built not only the city but also its vast empire that stretched from Northern Italy to the eastern Mediterranean. It details the urban transformations that Venice underwent in response to environmental vulnerability, industrialization, and mass tourism. Alongside the city's commercial prominence has been its dramatically changing political role, including its power as a city-state, regional stronghold, and overseas empire, as well as its impact on the development of fascism. Throughout, Dennis Romano highlights the city's cultural achievements in architecture, painting, and music, particularly opera.
This richly illustrated volume offers a stunning portrait of this most singular of cities.
No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, "another world." During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was celebrated as a model republic in an age of monarchs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became famous for its freewheeling lifestyle characterized by courtesans, casinos, and Carnival. When the city fell on hard times following the collapse of the Republic in 1797, a darker vision of Venice as a place of decay, disease, and death took hold. Today tourists from around the globe flock to the world heritage site as rising sea levels threaten its very foundations.
This comprehensive account reveals the adaptations to its geographic setting that have been a constant feature of living on water from Venice's origins to the present. It examines the lives of the women and men, noble and common, rich and poor, Christian, Jew, and Muslim, who built not only the city but also its vast empire that stretched from Northern Italy to the eastern Mediterranean. It details the urban transformations that Venice underwent in response to environmental vulnerability, industrialization, and mass tourism. Alongside the city's commercial prominence has been its dramatically changing political role, including its power as a city-state, regional stronghold, and overseas empire, as well as its impact on the development of fascism. Throughout, Dennis Romano highlights the city's cultural achievements in architecture, painting, and music, particularly opera.
This richly illustrated volume offers a stunning portrait of this most singular of cities.
795 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 7, 2023
111 people are currently reading
1026 people want to read
About the author
Dennis Romano
10 books7 followersDennis Romano is the Dr. Walter G. Montgomery and Marian Gruber Professor of History and a professor in the Department of Art and Music Histories at Syracuse University.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 1, 2025
This exhaustive history might be more than the average person needs (Crowley’s much shorter City of Fortune, though limited to Venice’s period of maximum wealth and influence, is a solid alternative), but I loved it and read it while visiting Venice.
September 8, 2024
A comprehensive political and social history of Venice that is both impressive in its sweep (and in placing Venice’s local history into its wider regional and global scope) but at the same time has far more detail than is probably strictly speaking necessary. Medieval and Renaissance Venice was really something, and its decay in the early modern period somewhat dispiriting. While it is fundamentally a narrative each chapter also contains an argument about why and how Venice changed during the period in question.
The central question that has driven so much of modern Venetian life has been about whether to revel in its unique antiquarianism, or to embrace modernization. It obviously has aesthetically chosen the former, but de facto modernization on terrafirma has inexorably drawn the residential population away to the point where Venice largely exists today as a museum to itself in which the map and territory have become identical
The central question that has driven so much of modern Venetian life has been about whether to revel in its unique antiquarianism, or to embrace modernization. It obviously has aesthetically chosen the former, but de facto modernization on terrafirma has inexorably drawn the residential population away to the point where Venice largely exists today as a museum to itself in which the map and territory have become identical
January 13, 2025
“Venice” is indeed, as the sub-title of the book states “The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City”.
I’ve been to Venice once in the early 1980’s as part of a post graduate school journey throughout Europe. It was a short 2-3 days in the Lagoon City, but it struck me then, as it strikes me now, as being one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
I’d also read over the years about Venice’s “glory days” as a powerful city state that ruled the Adriatic and most of the Eastern Mediterranean with its Empire that included the islands of Corfu, Crete and Cyprus.
I was keen to know more so I picked up this book when it published. It didn’t disappoint.
The book is incredibly well researched and covers the last two millennia when Venice’s lagoon started to assume its current form, how the islands started to be inhabited in the first 4 centuries of the common era, and extending up until today with Venice’s struggles to deal with rising waters, climate change, and an enormous influx of tourists.
Arguably the greatest strength of the book is the incredible amount of research that went into it. It’s encyclopaedic in detail. From reading it I now better understand how Venice grew to greatness by trading with the East and the influence of sea power on its history.
I could also see how the Portuguese traveling to the East in the 16th Century changed Venice, which lost its "monopoly" on goods from Asia and the Middle East – as did the rise of more powerful empires including the Ottomans and Hapsburgs.
Further, I now better understand how Venice's decline happened with the rise of Napoleon, and the subsequent occupation of Venice by the Austrians in the 19th Century. The book provided me with a good understanding of the City’s spectacular rise and fall.
This huge attention to detail is also perhaps the book’s greatest weakness, it is incredibly detailed and almost gives a year-by-year account of the City State covering the economic, geopolitical, political and social aspects of Venice. It was a big read being over 600 pages of lengthy detail.
I enjoyed the book very much and the addition of the maps, photos, and plates helped with the story.
I was interested in why the author omitted any reference to Marco Polo apart from the airport carrying his name. Perhaps he is seen to be more important to Venice than by the author? I’m not sure the thinking there.
It’s a great book and one that is encouraging me to visit Venice once again. It’s been much too long since that trip after university.
I’ve been to Venice once in the early 1980’s as part of a post graduate school journey throughout Europe. It was a short 2-3 days in the Lagoon City, but it struck me then, as it strikes me now, as being one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
I’d also read over the years about Venice’s “glory days” as a powerful city state that ruled the Adriatic and most of the Eastern Mediterranean with its Empire that included the islands of Corfu, Crete and Cyprus.
I was keen to know more so I picked up this book when it published. It didn’t disappoint.
The book is incredibly well researched and covers the last two millennia when Venice’s lagoon started to assume its current form, how the islands started to be inhabited in the first 4 centuries of the common era, and extending up until today with Venice’s struggles to deal with rising waters, climate change, and an enormous influx of tourists.
Arguably the greatest strength of the book is the incredible amount of research that went into it. It’s encyclopaedic in detail. From reading it I now better understand how Venice grew to greatness by trading with the East and the influence of sea power on its history.
I could also see how the Portuguese traveling to the East in the 16th Century changed Venice, which lost its "monopoly" on goods from Asia and the Middle East – as did the rise of more powerful empires including the Ottomans and Hapsburgs.
Further, I now better understand how Venice's decline happened with the rise of Napoleon, and the subsequent occupation of Venice by the Austrians in the 19th Century. The book provided me with a good understanding of the City’s spectacular rise and fall.
This huge attention to detail is also perhaps the book’s greatest weakness, it is incredibly detailed and almost gives a year-by-year account of the City State covering the economic, geopolitical, political and social aspects of Venice. It was a big read being over 600 pages of lengthy detail.
I enjoyed the book very much and the addition of the maps, photos, and plates helped with the story.
I was interested in why the author omitted any reference to Marco Polo apart from the airport carrying his name. Perhaps he is seen to be more important to Venice than by the author? I’m not sure the thinking there.
It’s a great book and one that is encouraging me to visit Venice once again. It’s been much too long since that trip after university.
December 26, 2025
Superbly detailed account and analysis of the millennia-plus history of this fascinating commercial and industrial city and empire!
Venice started out selling its salt. Then, in an era when land was wealth, Venice found a way to make itself rich by charging custom duties on trade moving in an out of its port between Germany/the German Empire and the Orient. Then, Venice became a manufacturer in its own right, specialising in glass, textiles and printed matter.
Along the way, it gained control of land assets as far away as the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Venice was not an absolute monarchy in an era of absolute monarchy. But neither was it Vermont-style anything-goes democracy. Rather, a series of cartels rose and ruled Venice much in the manner of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association of Johnson County War infamy, and of the FAANG of the twenty-first century, until it was destroyed and occupied by Napoleon, and then the Austrians.
This book is reminiscent of Peter H. Wilson's Europe's Tragedy on the Thirty Years War and The Holy Roman Empire in that it focuses on the evolution of institutions over time rather than on Clausewitzian "decisive battles" that never were. Venice engaged in no shortage of wars, most likely more, in fact, than America has. Most of these wars were indecisive.
This is an elegantly detailed and enthralling read.
Venice started out selling its salt. Then, in an era when land was wealth, Venice found a way to make itself rich by charging custom duties on trade moving in an out of its port between Germany/the German Empire and the Orient. Then, Venice became a manufacturer in its own right, specialising in glass, textiles and printed matter.
Along the way, it gained control of land assets as far away as the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Venice was not an absolute monarchy in an era of absolute monarchy. But neither was it Vermont-style anything-goes democracy. Rather, a series of cartels rose and ruled Venice much in the manner of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association of Johnson County War infamy, and of the FAANG of the twenty-first century, until it was destroyed and occupied by Napoleon, and then the Austrians.
This book is reminiscent of Peter H. Wilson's Europe's Tragedy on the Thirty Years War and The Holy Roman Empire in that it focuses on the evolution of institutions over time rather than on Clausewitzian "decisive battles" that never were. Venice engaged in no shortage of wars, most likely more, in fact, than America has. Most of these wars were indecisive.
This is an elegantly detailed and enthralling read.
January 7, 2026
Comprehensive history of Venice.
I learned a lot, especially about empirical Venice and the power of the nobility, which I didn't hear so much when I was in Venice. The nobles wanted history to say that Venice was a republic. At times anyone with enough money could buy enfranchisement. But later the nobility was closed; the people who could participate in the republic kept shrinking.
I thought the process of choosing a doge was like papal elevation, but it was much weirder. Intentionally.
The challenge of this book was to cover a lot of history with details, without disenfranchising the reader. Lots of references to other towns and places, but no maps explaining where these places were. (there are maps, just not enough)
Similarly references to people sometimes went without explanation as to who they were. It was a while before I realized that these unexplained figures were the authors of scraps of surviving 1st-person accounts, cited as examples of a larger topic, but nothing else is known about them.
The book was at its best when a person or family had enough significance to carry the narrative through a time of change, not just at a point in time.
I felt like to to truly appreciate this book, I needed a primer on Italian history first. Less of a great story and more like a great work of reference material.
I learned a lot, especially about empirical Venice and the power of the nobility, which I didn't hear so much when I was in Venice. The nobles wanted history to say that Venice was a republic. At times anyone with enough money could buy enfranchisement. But later the nobility was closed; the people who could participate in the republic kept shrinking.
I thought the process of choosing a doge was like papal elevation, but it was much weirder. Intentionally.
The challenge of this book was to cover a lot of history with details, without disenfranchising the reader. Lots of references to other towns and places, but no maps explaining where these places were. (there are maps, just not enough)
Similarly references to people sometimes went without explanation as to who they were. It was a while before I realized that these unexplained figures were the authors of scraps of surviving 1st-person accounts, cited as examples of a larger topic, but nothing else is known about them.
The book was at its best when a person or family had enough significance to carry the narrative through a time of change, not just at a point in time.
I felt like to to truly appreciate this book, I needed a primer on Italian history first. Less of a great story and more like a great work of reference material.
May 28, 2025
This history of Venice by Dennis Romano was, unfortunately, a bit of a letdown for me. I had high hopes going in, especially as a big fan of John Julius Norwich’s 'History of Venice' and I was excited at the prospect of a more updated, perhaps more modern take on the city’s extraordinary past. But this book turned out to be quite different from what I expected.
Rather than presenting a clear, linear narrative of Venice’s history, the book takes a more thematic approach, which, while intellectually valid, often feels disjointed and weighed down by excessive detail. Venice is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating cities in the world, but at times, this account seems to lose sight of that energy and complexity, bogged down instead in academic digressions and long explanations that can be hard to follow unless you’re already well-versed in the subject.
That said, Romano is a respected scholar, and his deep knowledge of Venetian history comes through. Readers looking for a more analytical or focused study of certain aspects of Venice (its institutions, rituals or shifting identity) may appreciate the depth. But if you are looking for a compelling, story-driven history of the city like Norwich’s classic, this one might not fully satisfy.
Rather than presenting a clear, linear narrative of Venice’s history, the book takes a more thematic approach, which, while intellectually valid, often feels disjointed and weighed down by excessive detail. Venice is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating cities in the world, but at times, this account seems to lose sight of that energy and complexity, bogged down instead in academic digressions and long explanations that can be hard to follow unless you’re already well-versed in the subject.
That said, Romano is a respected scholar, and his deep knowledge of Venetian history comes through. Readers looking for a more analytical or focused study of certain aspects of Venice (its institutions, rituals or shifting identity) may appreciate the depth. But if you are looking for a compelling, story-driven history of the city like Norwich’s classic, this one might not fully satisfy.
February 9, 2025
This book offers an exceptionally thorough and engaging overview of Venice’s history, from its early beginnings to its rise as a powerful trading empire and its gradual decline. The author provides fascinating insights into how Venice flourished through commerce, only to face economic challenges when Portugal discovered a direct sea route to India, allowing for the cheaper import of spices and other goods.
The book also does an excellent job of illustrating the city’s financial struggles over the centuries, detailing periods of debt, taxation challenges, and the need for external loans. It explores Venice’s loss of independence, its time under Austrian-Hungarian rule, and later its role within Fascist Italy.
One of the most compelling aspects of the book is its analysis of how Venice adapted over time—from a major trade hub to an industrial center, then a health and wellness retreat, a leisure destination, and ultimately one of today’s most iconic tourist hotspots. The author also highlights the modern challenges the city faces, including rising sea levels and the impact of mass cruise tourism.
The book also does an excellent job of illustrating the city’s financial struggles over the centuries, detailing periods of debt, taxation challenges, and the need for external loans. It explores Venice’s loss of independence, its time under Austrian-Hungarian rule, and later its role within Fascist Italy.
One of the most compelling aspects of the book is its analysis of how Venice adapted over time—from a major trade hub to an industrial center, then a health and wellness retreat, a leisure destination, and ultimately one of today’s most iconic tourist hotspots. The author also highlights the modern challenges the city faces, including rising sea levels and the impact of mass cruise tourism.
September 2, 2024
It's all here: Venice's founding, its slow rise to world dominance, and its sad fall into a state of tourism and decay where it languishes today. I understood much better Venice's remarkable ability to project republican power (as a city-state) in a time of Kings and despots, the reasons for its creation of a home-grown aristocracy which did so much to promote its growth on the world stage, and then, by a tragically myopic attempt to hold on to its riches, its fall into global insignificance beyond the excited postcard to the folks back home. What a story -- human cunning, greed, nobility, ambition, idealism, and mostly failure of all kinds, constantly -- and vividly -- in evidence.
Romano's book is thoroughgoing, and ably documents in plenty of detail the birth, rise and fall of this fascinating city that continues to capture our imagination even in its near-irrelevance today.
Romano's book is thoroughgoing, and ably documents in plenty of detail the birth, rise and fall of this fascinating city that continues to capture our imagination even in its near-irrelevance today.
December 26, 2024
“Most of all such legends and images, especially of Venice’s various ‘Golden Ages’ in politics, business, art, and culture, give too much credit to the elites of various sorts - the Dandolos, Palladios, Titians, Sarpis, Manins, Volpis, and others of Venice’s past. They obscure the agency of the hundreds of thousands of the city’s inhabitants who did the truly hard work of forging the city by manning the fleets, loading and unloading the merchant vessels, driving the pilings that supported great churches, dredging the canals of their muck, nursing the ill, burying the dead, stringing glass beads, sewing sails, grinding pigments for artists’ paint, cleaning hotel rooms, working in factories steeped in toxic chemicals, and selling trinkets to tourists. De-romanticizing Venice does not strip it of its power. It makes the achievements of the lagoon city and of all Venetians more fascinating and remarkable still.”
April 8, 2025
I added this book to my reading list after listening to Romano's appearance on the Tides of History Podcast with Patrick Wyman. At that point, I did not realize it would be a 30 hour audiobook experience that was a complete chronological deep dive into the city's entire history. Given that, and the fact that I've never been, this book is kinda overkill for me, personally. But it is objectively a very solid and comprehensive history that has something for everybody. For me personally, I found the evolution of Venice's political systems to be the most intriguing aspect of this book; seeing how the polity adjusted the dial from democracy to oligarchy to adapt to the political moment, and how it responded to the forces of global competition, labor, and fascism over the last two centuries, was a fascinating insight into resilience (one that may have some applicable lessons for, uh, certain times).
March 8, 2025
I love Venice. As it is today, a tourist trap, in a museum, on the water, organically grown on mud banks, but all this comes from a past that has been carefully curated and classified into this book. It was a great read, and if anything, I wanted more at times, not less, despite the large size of the book already. I recommend the book for people to understand how Venice happened in the mud banks of a lagoon, started with a more byzantine/east-Christian culture, and grew into a world commercial power, delivered big on commerce, art, inventions, leadership and social structure. Not a holiday read!
May 18, 2025
Finally finished it. This work combines a long overview of Venice's history with a detailed description of its geographic, economic, political, and social events. As such, it is a deep slog for a non-specialist. However, it does tell the story of the rise of Venice from a small lagoon town to dominate trade in the eastern Mediterranean, and then its decline as other trade routes grew and dominant forces rose elsewhere. I found particularly interesting the limited democracy of early republican Venice and then the closing off of an aristocracy that eventually became conservative and parochial. There are the bones of a very interesting story here, clothed in perhaps too much meaty detail.
January 6, 2026
A lonnnnnnnnnnng history of the gorgeous city, and to be fair, the author covers over one thousand years. Some of the sections, though, he seems lost in the weeds, describing details of commerce, intermarriages, politics, and architecture that might have been better suited to footnotes. The main reason I write this is that the flow of this history is cumbersome. It’s a scholarly work, so perhaps not to most everyone’s taste.
July 21, 2024
An engaging history of Venice. I'm knowingly biased as I spent some time there in college, but I have always found the full arc of Venice to be one of the more interesting and informative historical narratives that is almost never covered in surface level world histories. This was both a Republic (in a very limited sense) and a commercial powerhouse.
November 15, 2024
Brilliant, Evocative History
Romano’s account of the history of Venice, from its earliest pre-Venice beginnings, is a tour de force. This book combines impeccable scholarship, brilliant prose, and evocative storytelling. The insights Romano offers into the twists and turns of the lagoon city’s fortunes resonate as well-researched and formidably reasoned. An awesome read.
Romano’s account of the history of Venice, from its earliest pre-Venice beginnings, is a tour de force. This book combines impeccable scholarship, brilliant prose, and evocative storytelling. The insights Romano offers into the twists and turns of the lagoon city’s fortunes resonate as well-researched and formidably reasoned. An awesome read.
April 30, 2024
A very thorough, unbiased history of Venice. It does read like a history book in most cases but has some extremely interesting sections.
May 9, 2024
A history book made fun.
October 25, 2024
Fantastic journey through time with author Dennis Romano!
Reading this will forever change how you experience this city.
Reading this will forever change how you experience this city.
June 1, 2025
Fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews