Serenissima · Mercatoria

IThe refuge

Families chose the water.

In the fifth and sixth centuries, as Roman rule in the West came to an end, armies crossed northern Italy again and again. Families from the mainland cities, Aquileia, Altinum and Padua among them, moved out to the islands of the lagoon: mud and marsh, until then the home of fishermen and salt workers.

In 537 the Roman statesman Cassiodorus wrote to the maritime tribunes of the lagoon, in the first written notice of the settlements. He recalled their homes scattered across the water, made firm by the care of the people who built them.

Here after the manner of water-fowl have you fixed your home.

Cassiodorus to the maritime tribunes, 537, in Thomas Hodgkin's translation

Detailed woodcut bird's-eye view of Venice and its lagoon — **Pl. II**Venice in Jacopo de' Barbari's bird's-eye view of 1500.Museo Correr, Venice. Public domain. Source

Sources: Britannica, Venice: history; History of the Republic of Venice, origins; Cassiodorus, Variae XII.24, translated by Thomas Hodgkin, 1886.

IIEleven centuries

Built so that no one family could rule it.

Tradition holds that the lagoon chose its first doge in 697. The republic endured until 1797. From the twelfth century its supreme body was the Great Council, drawn from the city's patrician families, and the doge it elected held office for life, bound by an oath that limited what he could do.

Before 1268 the office had passed from father to son six times. From 1268 the council chose each doge in ten rounds of lot and vote, and no family could hold two seats in any round.

The election of a doge, as fixed in 1268

The Great Council Every member aged thirty or more could be drawn. Ten rounds follow.

The lots were balls drawn from an urn. A boy drew them: by custom, the first boy met after prayers in St Mark's on election day. English takes its word ballot from those balls.

Painting of a long hall with a gilded ceiling and tall arched windows, where rows of patricians in dark robes and white wigs sit on benches facing a tribunal hung in red — **Pl. III**The doge and the Great Council assembled in their hall in the Doge's Palace, in a painting of the early 1760s attributed to Canaletto.Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. Public domain. Source

Sources: Britannica, doge; Great Council of Venice; the republic's end, 12 May 1797; Mowbray and Gollmann, Electing the Doge of Venice, 2007; Molinari, How the Republic of Venice Chose Its Doge, 2020; Merriam-Webster, ballot.

IIIThe modern lagoon

What kept Venice, in a new city.

Venice welcomed newcomers on its own terms. From 1228 German merchants lived and traded at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi beside the Rialto, in rooms assigned by a Venetian official.

Serenissima introduces families to new cities that welcome them the same way. It looks for four things in each.

Governance

Written rules, courts that work and offices that no one person controls.

The lagoon

Protection in law and in structure: commitments agreed with the host state before anything is built.

Discretion

Conversations held in confidence, and only by introduction.

Beauty

Cities designed to be lived in for generations, at human scale and in lasting materials.

Every city stands under the law of its host country. What a family may do there, in residence or otherwise, is set out in private, with its own counsel.

Source: Fondaco dei Tedeschi.

IVBy introduction