The plague arrived in Venice in 1348, but what is the plague, and how did our ancestors understand it?
Proper ball games for decent people? Not all ball games are equal; some are more equal than others.
The Venetians played a ball game (or maybe two different) which was called football, or kicking ball, but it was more rugby-ish, but also not really.
How a fun game of knightly courtship turned into bloody war, and, last but not least, white chicken.
Noble, citizen, commoner, forestier, Jew, and what not. All people were absolutely not equal in the Republic of Venice.
The story of Bianca Cappello tells us something about the institutions of the Republic of Venice, the agility of its government, and of early modern diplomacy.
Bianca Cappello had eloped to Florence with her lover, whom she soon after married. She then became the mistress of the prince regent of the Duchy of Florence. Her husband took a mistress of his own, but her family murdered him on Blanca's doorstep. Does all that sound bad? Well, it's getting worse.
In 1563, a young Venetian noblewoman eloped with her lover, never to come back to Venice again. She went on to have an eventful, and highly unusual life, in Florence.
What's next for the Venetian Stories podcast, and spanners, plenty of spanners.
The decline of Venice didn't end with the loss of statehood. Attempts at modernising Venice have failed, and the result is an economic monoculture of mass tourism, and a constant demographic decline.
The 1600s and 1700s were a period of slow decline for Venice, until the Republic of Venice fell to Napoleon in 1797.
The 1400s and 1500s were centuries of enormous change for Venice, and for the rest of the world. The changing geography moved Venice from a central position in European trade to the margins.
Conquest, empire, naval battles, conspiracies, insurrections. The 1200s and 1300s were interesting times for Venice.
Venice became a more important state in the 1000s and 1100s, and started to build not only their trading empire, but also more equal relations to the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire and the Pope in Rome.
Venice appeared as a kind of, but not quite, sovereign polity in the late 700s and 800s. Venetian society, no longer governed directly by Constantinople, nor really independent, had to survive between the two super-powers of their time, Byzantium and the Carolingian Empire.
The origins of Venice go back to Roman times, long before there was a Venetian state, and a city called Venice.
The History of Venice spans some two millennia, and in this first episode of the podcast I'll try to draw some long lines from the very earliest times until the current.
A brief introduction of the Venetian Stories podcast, and your guide, René Seindal.