Book description
For six centuries the Republic of Venice was a maritime empire, its
sovereign power extending throughout much of the eastern Mediterranean
an empire of coasts, islands and isolated fortresses by which, as
Wordsworth wrote, the mercantile Venetians 'held the gorgeous east in
fee'.
Jan Morris reconstructs the whole of this glittering dominion in the
form of a sea-voyage, travelling along the historic Venetian trade
routes from Venice itself to Greece, Crete and Cyprus. It is a
traveller's book, geographically arranged but wandering at will from
the past to the present, evoking not only contemporary landscapes and
sensations but also the characters, the emotions and the tumultuous
events of the past. The first such work ever written about the
Venetian Stato da Mar , it is an invaluable historical companion for
visitors to Venice itself and for travellers through the lands the
Doges once ruled.
