Venice through the Ages, from Salt-Panners to Maritime Empire to Tourism: Interview with Professor Dennis Romano
Tides of History
Wondery / Patrick Wyman
4.8 • 6.3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2024
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Venice's lagoon is an unstable environment, but it has hosted one of the longest-lasting and most stable cities in world history. The history of Venice is many different things: politics on an imperial scale, industrial production, cultural influence, tourism, and above all, trade. Professor Dennis Romano is one of the most eminent historians of medieval and early modern Venice and author of the new book Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City. He joins me to talk about La Serenissima and its place in the last 1500 years.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wundery Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad free right now. |
| 0:04.3 | Join Wundery Plus in the Wundery App or Apple Podcasts. Hi everybody from Wundery welcome to another episode of Tides of History. I'm Patrick Wyman. Thanks so much for joining me today |
| 0:27.8 | Venice occupies a special place in history. For centuries it sat at the intersection of the most important trade routes linking Europe and the Mediterranean. |
| 0:35.6 | Its ships plied the seas laden with the rarest luxuries and the most profitable bulk goods. |
| 0:40.6 | Practically every new economic and technological innovation of the Middle Ages and early modern period, |
| 0:45.7 | from deposit banking to printing, found a welcoming home in Venice. |
| 0:49.6 | Whether they invented it or adopted it, the Venetian seal of approval invariably meant that new innovations |
| 0:55.1 | were going to stick around. |
| 0:57.1 | And in a world of kings and popes and emperors, the Venetians were something much different, |
| 1:01.0 | stubbornly so, for longer than most polities could dream of existing. |
| 1:05.1 | If you have even an iota of romanticism, Venice speaks to you. |
| 1:08.8 | It's a place unlike any other, both magical and supremely grounded, dynamic and unchanging at the same time. |
| 1:15.0 | I love Venice. It's probably the place I've spent more time thinking and writing about |
| 1:18.4 | than any other aside from Rome. And I am incredibly excited to talk about it today. |
| 1:23.0 | Today's guest has written what will undoubtedly become the standard work on Venice's long and eventful history. |
| 1:29.0 | Dennis Romano is the Dr. Walter Montgomery and Marion Gruber professor of history |
| 1:33.9 | emeritus at Syracuse University. He has written a tremendous variety of books |
| 1:38.1 | and articles many of which I've used over the years for my own episodes and book |
| 1:41.4 | chapters. Among them are The Likeness of Venice, |
| 1:44.0 | a life of Doge Francesco Foscari, 1373 to 1457, |
| 1:48.0 | and the edited volume Venice Reconsidered, |
| 1:51.0 | the history and civilization of an Italian city state 1297 to 1797. |
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