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Venice: Centuries
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Venice became an imperial power following the Fourth Crusade, which seized Constantinople in 1204 and established the Latin Empire; Venice herself carved out a sphere of influence known as the Duchy of the Archipelago. This seizure of Constantinople would ultimately prove as decisive a factor in ending the Byzantine Empire as the loss of the Anatolian themes after Manzikert. Though the Byzantines recovered control of the ravaged city a half century later, the Byzantine Empire was greatly weakened, and existed as a ghost of its old self until Sultan Mehmet The Conqueror took the city in 1453. Considerable Byzantine plunder was brought back to Venice, including the Winged Lion of St. Mark, symbol of Venice.
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The Byzantine style prevailed in Venice during the 11th and 12th centuries. The arches of this period are semicircular and usually highly stilted. Sculptured ornamentation, flowing scrollwork of semi-conventional foliage mingled with grotesque animals, birds or dragons, is freely applied to arches and string courses. The walls are built of solid brickwork and then covered with thin slabs of rich and costly marbles. Sculptured panels, with conventional motives, peacocks, eagles devouring hares, peacocks drinking from a cup on a tall pillar, are let into both exterior and interior walls, as are roundels of precious marbles, sawn from columns of porphyry, serpentine, verd antique, &c. The adoption of veneer for decoration prohibited any deep cutting, and almost all the sculpture is shallow.
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At Palazzo Abadessa you are surrounded by five centuries of Venice' history. Since the 1500s. This splendid historic residence offers a spacious and exclusive garden. All of the guest rooms are spacious, several feature timber ceiling beams while others are frescoed.
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This palace housed Venice's former governmental departments. It dates from the early ninth century, but the earliest recoverable traces are from around the 1340s. The main entrance of the palace, the Porta della Carta, is one of the most bombastic Gothic works in Venice.
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