table tbody tr tdA stunningly illustrated history of Venice, from its beginnings as 'La Serenissima' – 'the Most Serene Republic' – to the Italian city that continues to enchant visitors today.br br 'Everything about Venice,' observed Lord Byron, 'is, or was, extraordinary – her aspect is like a dream, and her history is like a romance.' Dream and romance have conditioned myriad encounters with Venice across the centuries, but the city's story bodies another kind of experience altogether – the hard reality of an independent state built on conquest, profit and entitlent and on the toughness and resilience of a free people. Masters of the sea, the Venetians raised an pire through an ethos of service and loyalty to a republic that lasted a thousand years.br br In this new study of key moments in Venice's history, from its half-legendary founding amid the collapse of the Roman pire to its modern survival as a fragile city of the arts menaced by saturation tourism and rising sea levels, Jonathan Keates shows us just how much this rarkable place has contributed to world culture and explains how it endures as an object of desire and inspiration for so many.td tr tbodytable
