venice and its surroundings 35
CannaregioCastelloSanta CroceDorsoduroSan MarcoSan PoloGhettoCannaregioCastelloSanta CroceDorsoduroSan MarcoSan PoloArsenalGhettoMap 1.2. The Sestieri of Venice.seen “the birth of the empire of the caliphs, had seen it threaten to invade
their lands, and had seen it divide and destroy itself,” which also, “being a
longtime ally of the emperors of Byzantium, had time and again rescued
and oppressed them.”33 “The very nature of the country that the Vene-
tians inhabited was the cause of their long independence.” “The wind-
ing, interlaced canals of the lagoon form an impenetrable maze for any
pilot who has not spent a long time studying and navigating their layout.”34
Even the scenery of the lagoons was planted. But as soon as the irresistible
growth of Rialto-Venice began, this process tended only to attract histori-
cal attention, and the water, a wonderful element of the Venetian scenery
now domesticated, was only mentioned to better describe Venice’s urban
aesthetic and theatricality.
Yet then as now, the existence and the continued survival of Venice do
not depend only on the mastery of the immediate urban environment. The
fate of the city, irreducibly, is linked to that of the lagoon basin, a fragile
33 Sismonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques, 1:299.
34 Ibid., 1:299–300.