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 The Ponte dei Sospiri, the Bridge of Sighs
The Ponte dei Sospiri, the Bridge of Sighs
Venice is famous for its canals. It is built on an archipelago of 118 islands formed by about 150 canals in a shallow lagoon. The islands on which the city is built are connected by about 400 bridges. In the old center, the canals serve the function of roads, and every form of transport is on water or on foot. In the 19th century a causeway to the mainland brought a railway station to Venice, and an automobile causeway and parking lot was added in the 20th century. Beyond these land entrances at the northern edge of the city, transportation within the city remains, as it was in centuries past, entirely on water or on foot. Venice is Europe's largest urban carfree area, unique in Europe in remaining a sizable functioning city in the 21st century entirely without motorcars or trucks.
 Gondola on Grand Canal beside Rialto Bridge
Gondola on Grand Canal beside Rialto Bridge
The classical Venetian boat is the gondola, although it is now mostly used for tourists, or for weddings, funerals, or other ceremonies, due to its cost. Most Venetians now travel by motorised waterbuses ("vaporetti") which ply regular routes along the major canals and between the city's islands. The city also has many private boats. The only unmotorized gondolas still in common use by Venetians are the traghetti, foot passenger ferries crossing the Grand Canal at certain points without bridges.
Venice is served by the newly rebuilt Marco Polo International Airport, or Aeroporto di Venezia Marco Polo, named in honor of its famous citizen. The airport is on the mainland and was rebuilt away from the coast so that visitors now need to get a bus to the pier, from which a water taxi or Aliliguna waterbus can be used.
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 Typical masks worn during the Carnival of Venice
Typical masks worn during the Carnival of Venice
In the Senate passed sumptuary laws, but these merely resulted in changes in fashion in order to circumvent the law. Dull garments were worn over colorful ones, which then were cut to show the hidden colors — which resulted in the wide spread of men's "slashed" fashions in the 15th century.
During the France and Flanders. By the end of the century, Venice was famous for the splendor of its music, as exemplified in the "colossal style" of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, which used multiple choruses and instrumental groups.
Canvases (the now almost universal surface for painting) originated in Venice during the early renaissance. They were generally rough.
Life in 1750s Venice is illustrated by the biography A Venetian Affair, which is based on the prolific love letters between a Venetian nobleman and his illegitimate half-English lover.
A remarkable, and unflattering, portrait of Venetian politics appears in The Bravo, published in 1831 by American novelist James Fennimore Cooper. A bravo is an assassin under contract to the state, typically carrying out his assignments with a stilletto. Cooper's novel depicts Venice as a brutal dictatorship, governed through intrigue and murder, masked by the placid facade of the Repubblica Serenissima (serene republic).
Other major works involving Venice include:
William Shakespeare's Othello and The Merchant of Venice
Friedrich Schiller's Der Geisterseher (The Ghost-Seer)
Death in Venice, a 1912 novel by Thomas Mann
Orhan Pamuk's short stories "Batsin Bu Dünya" (1983) and "Emrah Gülle Gel de Gülme" (1983)
The Silent Gondoliers a fable told by William Goldman's S. Morgenstern
Russia with Love">From Russia with Love, a James Bond novel and film
Moonraker, a James Bond novel and film
Nicolas Roeg's 1973 film Don't Look Now, based on a story by Daphne du Maurier
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989 film)
The Italian Job (in its 2003 remake incarnation)
Casanova (2005 film loosely based on the life of Giacomo Casanova)
In videogames:
Venice appeared in Core Design's Tomb Raider 2.
Venice was a multiplayer level in Free Radical Design's Timesplitters: Future Perfect.
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Scholarship
Chambers, D.S. (1970). The Imperial Age of Venice, 1380-1580. London: Thames & Hudson. The best brief introduction in English, still completely reliable.
Contarini, Gasparo (1599). The Commonwealth and Gouernment of Venice. Lewes Lewkenor, trsl. London: "Imprinted by I. Windet for E. Mattes." The most important contemporary account of Venice's governance during the time of its blossoming. Also available in various reprint editions.
Drechsler, Wolfgang (2002). "Venice Misappropriated." Trames 6(2), pp. 192-201. A scathing review of Martin & Romano 2000; also a good summary on the most recent economic and political thought on Venice. For more balanced, less tendentious, and scholarly reviews of the Martin-Romano anthology, see "The Historical Journal" (2003) "Rivista Storica Italiana" (2003).
Grubb, James S. (1986). "When Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Venetian Historiography." Journal of Modern History 58, pp. 43-94. The classic "muckraking" essay on the myths of Venice.
Martin, John Jeffries and Dennis Romano (eds). Venice Reconsidered. The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297-1797. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP. The most recent collection on essays, many by prominent scholars, on Venice.
Muir, Edward (1981). Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. The classic of Venetian cultural studies, highly sophisticated.
Rösch, Gerhard (2000). Venedig. Geschichte einer Seerepublik. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. In German, but the most recent top-level brief history of Venice.
Other
Ruskin, John (1853). The Stones of Venice. Abridged edition Links, JG (Ed), Penguin 2001. ISBN 0141390654. Seminal work on architecture and society
di Robilant, Andrea (2004). A Venetian Affair. Harper Collins. ISBN 184115542X Biography of Venetian nobleman and lover, from correpondence in the 1750s.
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