‘Everything about Venice,’ observed Lord Byron, ‘is, or was, extraordinary – her aspect is\n\nlike a dream, and her history is like a romance.’ Dream and romance have conditioned\nmyriad encounters with Venice across the centuries, but the city’s story embodies the\nhard reality of an independent state built on conquest, profit and entitlement and on the\ntoughness and resilience of a free people.\nIn this new study of key moments in Venice’s history, from its half­legendary founding\namid the collapse of the Roman empire to its modern survival as a fragile city of the arts\nmenaced by saturation tourism and rising sea levels, Jonathan Keates shows us just\nhow much this remarkable place has contributed to world culture and explains how it\nendures as an object of desire and inspiration for so many.