Venice

ven'is, a city of northern Italy. It is situated on 117 small islands about two and one-half miles from the mainland, in a shallow bay of the Adriatic. It is called "The Queen of the Adriatic." It looks like a city afloat. There are about 15,000 buildings, resting chiefly on piles driven into the soft mud of the islands. In lieu of streets there are about 150 canals, many of them so narrow that they are passable by small boats only. Along some of the canals the buildings rise sheer from the water's edge; along others there are narrow footpaths. The doors of many houses open directly on the water. Seaweed clings to the doorsteps. Boys dive from windows directly into the canal. Several hundred narrow lanes, paved with stone, brick, and asphalt, wind like network between the buildings and cross the canals, by means of nearly four hundred, chiefly stone, bridges. "White phantom city," says Longfellow, "whose untrodden streets are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting shadows of palaces and strips of sky."

The group of islands is about six miles and one-half in circumference. It is defended from the sea by a long breakwater, partly of sand and partly of masonwork, through which there are four openings. A long railway bridge of 222 arches connects the city with the mainland.

The population of 150,000 people is engaged in commerce, manufacturing, and trade. There are manufactures of glass, lace, beads, silks, cottons, woolens, tobacco, soap, wax, jewelry, silverware, watches, artificial flowers, and furniture. The shipping of the city is second only to that of Genoa. Over 3,000 ships register annually. Water is brought from the mainland by means of an aqueduct. The climate of the city is delightful. The average temperature for January, the coldest month, is 32 degree; for July, the warmest month, is 76 degree.

A wretched village from which the present "City of Marble" has grown, was founded in the fifth century by refugees fleeing from Attila the Hun. As early as the thirteenth century Venice was an independent republic, holding considerable territory on the coasts of the Adriatic and in the Levant. Its chief commercial rival was Genoa. Venice, at that time the greatest shipowner in the world, was the chief point of departure for the Crusaders. An immense trade was carried on. The productions of Europe were exchanged for those of Asia. In the fifteenth century Venice was commercially the most important city in the world. As a center of trade it was the successor of Athens and Carthage. The profits of the merchants were reckoned at 4,000,000 ducats annually. It was with this money that the great marble palaces of the city were erected. Though nominally a republic, the government was, as a matter of fact, in the hands of a few nobles whose presiding officer was known as the doge.

The Turks, who took Constantinople in 1453, shut off the caravans of the East from bringing the merchandise to the Mediterranean coast, thus cutting off much of the trade on which the prosperity of Venice was based. The discovery of America and of a new route to India by way of Cape of Good Hope transferred the commercial center of Europe to Portugal and later to London, leaving Venice hopelessly at one side. It retained its independence until the days of Napoleon. For a time the city was under the domination of Austria, but in 1866 it was recovered and became a part of the modern kingdom of Italy.

No small part of the present population depends for revenue upon visitors who flock from America and Europe in great numbers to see the treasures of art for which Venice is noted. Many of the old palaces have been converted into hotels and lodging houses. The arcades are lined with shops displaying Venetian manufactures, jewelry, and knickknacks to tempt the purses of tourists. Travelers may arrive at the city either by rail or by steamer. Instead of cabs at the stations a fleet of gondolas is in wait to convey passengers and baggage to hotels and boarding places. The gondoliers are not permitted to solicit business. As soon, however, as the traveler selects his gondola, the owner appears ready to bargain and to serve. We may add in passing that the gondola is the ordinary means of conveyance, taking the place of cabs, street cars, etc., in other cities. Walking is precarious. In time of high eastern winter winds the tide, which ordinarily rises a foot or two, swells to eight feet and inundates a considerable part of the city, rendering a gondola necessary even to cross a public square. The gondolier aims to earn about twenty cents an hour.

The key to the plan of the city is the Grand Canal which passes entirely through the group of islands. It is two miles in length, seventy-five yards wide, and sixteen feet deep. Seen from a gondola it is a lane of water passing between rows of marble palaces. The gondolier has the names of over one hundred palaces, churches, and edifices at his tongue's end. The canal is spanned by the Rialto, a magnificent bridge, 158 feet long and 90 feet wide. The abutments rest on 12,000 piles. It leaps the canal in a single marble arch 74 feet in span and 32 feet in height. There are also other bridges.

Descriptions of the city start with the Piazza or Place of St. Mark, a square paved with trachyte and marble. The noted buildings of the city face it or are in the immediate vicinity. "The Place of St. Marks," says Howells, "is the heart of Venice." It is equivalent to about two ordinary city blocks in size. On a summer evening it is filled with a gay throng. The military band plays usually each day.

The most notable building is the Church of St. Mark. It shelters the remains of the bones of the apostle of that name, said to have been brought by the Venetians from Alexandria in 829. The building has the form of a Greek cross, that is to say, it has four equal arms. A Byzantine dome rises from the center, and one at the end of each arm. The walls are decorated with five hundred marble columns. The building is veneered with marble. In his Stones of Venice Ruskin speaks of the admirable color effect produced by glass, transparent alabaster, polished marble, and lustrous gold. Four gilded bronze horses taken by Constantine from Rome to Constantinople and by a warlike doge from Constantinople to Venice stand over the principal portal. There is an old jest to the effect that these horses neigh whenever they hear the hour struck in the clock tower over the way.

The square Campanile, or bell-tower, 322 feet in height, also facing the Place of St. Mark, fell in 1902, but it has been rebuilt. Another noted building, in its way one of the richest specimens of architecture extant, is the ducal palace or Palace of the Doges. It faces a fine court. It is impossible in a paragraph to describe the marble stairways, colonnades, arcades, halls, courts, statues, galleries, and art treasures of this wonderful building. Some of the most eminent artists of the Middle Ages contributed to its decoration. The library of St. Mark contains 350,000 printed volumes and 10,000 manuscripts.

A lofty stone bridge, known as the Bridge of Sighs, connects the palace with the prison. Mr. Howells calls it a "pathetic swindle," on the score that there is little of interest in a passageway connecting the criminal courts with the city prison. Political prisoners were confined in apartments, now closed, under the lead roof of the palace. They were put to the torture and executed in gloomy dungeons beneath.

The Academy of Fine Arts contains pictures chiefly by Venetian masters. It does not rank with the great collections at Rome, Florence, Dresden, and elsewhere, but it is of importance in a study of the history of art.

The picturesque crowds, the pigeons that come down in the squares to be fed, and other equally interesting features of the city fill many a volume of delightful reading. A very pleasant short excursion may be taken to the Venetian glass works, the oldest in Europe.

See Gondola; Campanile; Rialto; Bridge Of Sighs