Blood Francesco's Venice

1,550 years ago,

Attila the Hun brought terror to the people of Northern Italy.

He burned and pillaged his way through villages and towns.

The people were left with only two choices -

escape...or die.

The refugees escaped to this -

a group of tiny islands in a mosquito-infested lagoon.

Here, they created the most beautiful city in the world - Venice.

This great city is a temple to romance and passion and beauty...

..often borne out of violence and disease, ambition and lust.

This place has produced some of the most brilliant art the world has ever seen.

But all around us, every stone of the city, every brick,

is a brush stroke on the greatest work of art of all - Venice.

The story Of Venice is also MY story.

My name is Francesco da Mosto - I'm a Venetian.

My family has lived here for more than a thousand years.

I have always lived here.

My children were born here,

and I hope my family will live here for another thousand years.

We were one of the first families to come to the lagoon.

My ancestors had been everything

from merchants to prostitutes to explorers.

The city is in my blood.

Most great cities grew up because they were in a good location -

Paris, Rome, London.

But here, Venice, no.

This city grew up because it was in a very, very bad location.

It was a perfect hiding place for the settlers who fled here from Attila the Hun

almost 16 centuries ago.

The Venetian lagoon is an enclosed shallow sea,

200 square miles of salt water

dotted with tiny islands.

It sits at the top of the Adriatic Sea,

between Italy and Yugoslavia.

Even now, many of the islands in the lagoon are strange and desolate places,

each one little more than a boggy marsh -

half sea, half land.

All my life, people have been saying that Venice is sinking.

But these islands have been sinking from the beginning of time.

They're made of sand, mud...

Not solid ground.

So the first settlers had to invent a new way of living, and a new way to build.

The first houses looked like this.

Built in the mud and on the water.

But before they could build anything, they had to make a solid foundation.

So they began hammering wooden piles into the lagoon.

Today, we're still doing the same thing.

All of Venice is built on a bed of huge wooden nails.

The marshland was no good for farming,

so the early settlers had to become fishermen.

The settlers lived on the fish of the lagoon, but it was also their currency.

They would trade fish

for wood, wheat and wine.

And fish is still a great passion for us Venetians.

The first big settlement was on the island of Torcello,

eight kilometres to the north-east of Venice today.

Its basilica still stands.

It dates from the year 639.

Here you feel close to the early settlers in the lagoon,

struggling to survive,

yet ambitious to create great beauty.

On the west wall is a scene of the Last Judgment.

But this is not like most Italian churches.

To the Western eye, these figures are surprising.

They are Christian images,

but they are rooted in artistic traditions from beyond Europe,

from the East before it was Islamic.

It was here in Torcello that the lagoon dwellers first showed their genius in art.

But their future would not be on this island.

Their greatest creation - Venice - lay just around the corner.

When the settlers had fled Attila the Hun, they had occupied the outer reaches of the lagoon.

And for more than three centuries, they had been safe.

But now prosperity made them an attractive target.

In the year 810, they were attacked,

this time from the open sea.

The settlers fled to the heart of the lagoon,

to the group of small islands known as the Rivo Alto.

But in the panic, they were about to stumble on the secret of the lagoon,

a discovery shrouded in the mists of time.

There is a legend in which the attackers were directed by an old woman to Rivo Alto

with just a simple word. She said, "sempre dritto" - straight on.

Far from betraying the fleeing settlers, the old woman of the legend knew the secret of the lagoon,

the secret that would destroy any enemy fleet.

The ships ran aground, because beneath the calm waters of the lagoon

lay a treacherous underwater terrain

of shallows and mudflats that wrecked the enemy fleet.

So, it would be here the settlers built Venice.

The waters of the lagoon would protect Venice from land attack,

while the shallows would make attack by sea impossible.

The city would be a miracle of its geography.

But its location would also make life hard for the first Venetians.

In summer, the heat and humidity can be almost unbearable.

In the early days, malaria killed off many Venetians.

In winter, the city lies exposed to the snows and biting wind

beating down from the Dolomite mountains to the north.

Banks of fog sweep in across the flatlands of the lagoon and settle over Venice

like a deep impenetrable blanket that clings to the narrow waterways.

The early Venetians set about making their new home into a place to live and work.

They would expand the inlets and rivers of the Rivo Alto islands

into the greatest network of canals ever created.

Today, distracted by fine churches and palaces,

we forget the first great success of this city was its canals.

They are triumphs of early engineering.

But they have always been a delicate balance -

harnessing the tidal waters of the lagoon to man's needs.

Every few years, each canal has to be blocked by a dam, then drained,

so that the wood piles in the foundation walls can be repaired.

The spreading network of canals shaped the city that grew up around them.

Houses lined the canals and bridges crossed them.

Water would define the very layout of the city -

both the abundance of salt water and the need for fresh water.

Here in Venice, we're all surrounded by salt water.

It is very difficult to find fresh water to drink.

So what did they decide to do?

They made some wells to collect rainwater and they stored it in underground tanks.

These four parts are to filter the water in sand.

They went down in an underground tank...

This is the old stone, and then here there is the tank.

And then, all around the well, there was the normal life, there were the houses, they were living day by day.

Each square had its own small community.

They were tightknit and tightly packed.

Each bridge crossed was a journey into a different territory.

There were feuds, and one feud in particular between the Nicolottis and the Castellanis.

The Nicolottis and the Castellanis were gangs,

sworn rivals.

They hated each other.

The hatred led to fighting, blood and death.

The fights became known as "la guerra dei pugni".

The Castellanis were shipbuilders.

They wore red hats and scarves.

The Nicolottis were hard-living fishermen.

They wore black.

Castellani women wore flowers on one side of their breast, and the Nicolotti on the other breast.

Blood feuds continued for generations.

So Venice needed strong government to impose law and order.

It was to evolve a system like no other in the world, and a ruler unlike any other -

the doge.

The doge was an elected ruler,

head of a republic, not a monarchy.

His descendants couldn't inherit, but he did live in a palace.

The doges' Palace is one of the most extraordinary buildings in the world.

There has been a palace on this site from the early 9th century.

From here, for almost 1,000 years,

the doge ruled Venice.

The present building is a mix of Gothic and classical, East and West,

the marriage of styles that would come to define the look of Venice.

The doge could enjoy a fine palace at a time when other rulers

hid themselves away in heavy medieval fortifications.

Venice was beginning to exhibit the confidence that came with its miraculous location -

impregnable to attack, protected by the lagoon.

At the top of the giant staircase in the palace courtyard

are the figures of Neptune and Mars, the gods of the sea

and war.

It seemed as though Venice had tamed them both.

This was the ultimate seat of power.

The doge presided over the Ruling Council here.

Laws were made here and justice dispensed.

Even the state prison was part of the palace.

And, at its centre, the doge lived in splendour.

This is your Downing Street, Houses of Parliament, Tower of London and Buckingham Palace rolled into one.

Throughout the palace, Venice is represented as a beautiful woman.

In painting after painting, she appears with Christ himself.

At times, she seems to outshine even the son of God.

The doge, too, is deified.

These images foretell what Venice would become - proud and arrogant.

The doge even appears with the Madonna.

But that was all far in the future.

In the early days, the doge was far from being considered a god.

In fact, as warring families fought for control of Venice,

the doge had trouble even staying alive.

Doge Teodato Ipato came to a terrible end.

He was blinded and deposed by his successor.

Doge Domenico Monegario

was stabbed to death in his own palace.

And 80-year-old Doge Pietro Tradonico

was sprung on by an armed gang and left for dead.

But, over time, things improved.

This is the Great Council chamber.

Here, the doge presided over meetings with the 2,500 representatives of Venice.

This room was at the heart of Venetian government.

What we see today is the replacement to an earlier hall, burnt down in 1577.

But it reflects the confidence of early Venice.

At the far end, is a huge canvas by Tintoretto.

His vision of paradise,

a bold assertion that Venetian government could match the divine order above.

Venice tried so hard to banish earthly imperfections,

that the whole process of electing a doge turned into a real nightmare.

First, nine members were chosen by lottery.

And these nine had to choose 40 members of the Great Council.

And each of these 40 members had to be approved by at least seven of the nine.

From these 40, they drew lots and they become 25.

And these 25 have to choose another 12.

The 12 decided, they choose another 45.

And from the 45, they arrive to be 12. Sorry, 11.

Eleven.

These 11 were going to choose 41 voters,

and it is this 41 that are going to make the election of the doge.

It was that easy(!)

Even us Venetians don't really understand it.

But we do understand that it worked. I think so.

So, for the times, Venice made immense efforts to avoid the corruption of other states,

to stop power falling into the hands of one dynasty.

Even ordinary people could have some influence on government.

All over the palace are these letter boxes.

Into the mouth, people could post private accusations

of crimes committed at any level of society.

It worked - Venetians were amongst the most law-abiding of Europeans.

Even the doge was checked for bribery and corruption.

Every indulgence was granted to the doge,

except he was not allowed to speak to foreigners without supervision...

except every letter he wrote, even to his wife, had to pass before a censor.

He could receive gifts, but only flowers, rose water, sweet herbs and balsam.

So he had everything... except his freedom.

In this room, are pictures of every doge who ruled Venice.

Only one is missing -

hidden by a black cloth is the face of Doge Marin Falier,

the doge who tried to make himself king, to overthrow the republic.

The plot was foiled and he was beheaded on the steps to the palace.

The office of the doge brought to Venice all the majesty of a monarchy

without its dynastic limitations.

In a world of magnificent court ritual, Venice was unrivalled.

But the city lacked a spiritual figurehead,

something all powerful cities of the age possessed,

the relics of a great saint to call its own.

Rome had the body of St Peter, an apostle, and a direct link to Christ.

All Venice had was St Theodore - truly a second-division saint.

But the Venetians believed they had a claim on someone greater.

Local legend claimed that the apostle St Mark, blown off-course into the Venetian lagoon,

had seen an angel who told him one day he would be laid to rest there.

Inspired by the legend,

two Venetian merchants slipped unnoticed into the crypt of a church in Alexandria

on the north coast of Africa.

They were there to steal one of the most sacred relics of the Christian world -

the remains of St Mark the Apostle.

In the medieval world, the relics of saints

who were close to Christ brought in huge amounts of money from pilgrims.

They conferred sacred status on a city and inspired armies to feats of military glory.

News of the theft spread quickly.

All the ships in the harbour were searched.

But the merchants concealed the body of the saint in a basket, under pieces of pork,

and the Muslim soldiers fled.

The audacious plan had succeeded, and St Mark came back to Venice.

The city had a saint to rival even Rome,

and soon the ancient symbol of St Mark became the emblem of Venice -

the winged lion.

When the Venetians built a church to house the body of their new saint,

it would become one of the most recognisable buildings in the world -

the Basilica of St Mark.

On the front of the building, a mosaic depicts the body arriving from Alexandria.

St Mark's is the most extravagant and richly decorated church in the whole of Europe.

Built as the doges' private chapel, it took 30 years to complete -

a miracle of engineering for the end of the 11th century,

though it has been sinking into the marshy ground ever since.

Like the Basilica of Torcello, the inspiration is from the East.

The church is in the form of a Greek cross, supporting five great domes.

The interior is dominated by Christ and his disciples.

In all, there are 4,000 square metres of mosaic,

crafted by Venetian artists over several centuries.

Above the altar is the Pala d'Oro,

the great altar screen created by Venetian and Byzantine goldsmiths.

Beneath the altar lies the tomb of St Mark,

the sacred heart of the city.

But this place is more than an expression of religious devotion.

For it was here that the authority of the doge received divine sanction.

In the nave sit two great pulpits.

One pulpit was reserved for religious addresses,

the other was for the doge.

This is where he would address the people of Venice,

where he stood to proclaim Venice would submit to no-one -

emperor, king or pope.

The exterior is an extraordinary confection -

Venetian ornament mixes with precious objects from overseas.

In 1075, the doge had proclaimed it was the duty of every travelling Venetian

to bring treasures back to adorn the facade.

But it is the domes of St Mark's that give it such a memorable skyline.

Those famous Eastern-looking onion domes were put on later.

They are made of wood and covered by lead.

The real stone domes, much flatter and less eye-catching,

are hidden underneath.

St Mark's set the mood for Venice to be the most sensational stage-set the world had ever seen.

Its religious and political centrepieces proclaimed the city's independence and growing confidence.

Its people had transformed from fishermen into merchants.

Now merchants would become princes of trade,

their early wooden houses replaced by brick-and-stone palaces.

Modern Venice was beginning to take shape.

It was around this time that my family became successful merchants

and decided to build a grand house.

It is the oldest palazzo to survive on the Grand Canal.

Now it is rotting, and one of the saddest sights of the city.

It breaks my heart.

This palace is called Ca'da Mosto.

It was built by my family in the 13th century,

and my ancestors lived here nearly 400 years, until 1603,

when it was bequeathed to another family.

I've driven past it a thousand times...

but I've never been inside.

If I have to be sincere, I'm a little shy to come inside this place.

Because I have always seen this house from outside,

the mask that normally the public sees.

It's difficult to enter a world where you have never been before.

A place you know all the people of your family lived over many centuries.

It's quite a strange sensation.

Something that gives you a feeling of all the history on your shoulders.

You think of who you are in this moment of your life.

My family didn't just live in this house -

they did business here.

They used their house as a warehouse - a showroom.

And a place to make money, and a landing stage.

Because the most profitable goods were from overseas,

a successful merchant had to be a sailor, too.

When this house was first built

it would have been a more modest building,

just two storeys high,

but it stood at the very hub of the city.

It was here that merchants built their boats,

ready to travel ever-greater distances across the seas.

These merchant sailors had to be ready to defend themselves.

Their boats, loaded with valuable goods from around the Mediterranean,

had to fight off pirates and foreign rivals.

The Venetian merchant traders became feared as the ablest military seamen of the age.

Trade - something of a dirty word in the rest of Europe -

was a noble occupation in Venice.

And one merchant would become more famous than any other.

His name was Enrico Dandolo.

And his story would become linked with the fate of the city.

It began with a gross act of violence against the people of Venice -

violence that would come from an unexpected source.

By the 12th century, the Venetians had trading posts all over the Mediterranean.

Most profitable of all were the trading links with Byzantium,

and in particular its capital city of Constantinople.

Byzantium had influenced events in Venice for centuries.

But now, power had shifted, and Venice was gaining the upper hand.

This was the old Venetian Quarter in Constantinople.

10,000 Venetians lived and worked here.

First, they were invited here to trade,

but slowly they were taking over and getting rich.

The Byzantines were not happy.

The Byzantine Emperor had given them permission to live in a confined area

of warehouses and wharves by the sea wall.

But more and more, Venetian merchants spread throughout the city.

This all became too much for the Byzantine authorities.

The Venetians were buying up their houses and marrying their women.

And on one quiet night in March 1171,

something happened that would change the course of Venetian history.

As the Venetian trading families sat down to eat,

they all received an unexpected house call.

In just a few days, thousands of Venetians were arrested...

..stripped of their possessions, and thrown into prison.

The Venetians had been caged by their trading partner.

Humiliated, they could do nothing but wait.

For centuries, Venice and Constantinople had been allies,

but now they had become the worst of enemies.

News of the arrests travelled fast to Venice.

You can imagine how the people felt here,

when they heard that thousands of their fellow citizens had been jailed in Constantinople.

Brothers, fathers, sons, even mothers and daughters, had all been thrown into prison.

It was the greatest threat to Venice since the city had risen from the swamps of the lagoon.

The Venetians decided to negotiate the release of the prisoners.

There was only one man for the job, Enrico Dandolo, the greatest merchant seaman of the age.

But it was a trap.

He was taken prisoner and probably tortured.

Either that, or he was beaten up on the streets of Constantinople.

All we know is when he got back to Venice, he was blind.

We will never know the truth of how Enrico Dandolo lost his sight.

But one fact we can be sure of - even blinded, stuck in his palace on the Rialto,

he never abandoned the cause of the republic.

Venice had been brought to her knees.

Byzantium had stamped on the city's growing economy

and wiped out her great trading links with the East.

But the Venetians were not about to give in.

Let me tell you something about us Venetians.

We really stick together.

Living in this little island in the lagoon, we have to help each other.

Every building is an achievement.

The Venetian character is in the bridges

and in the stones around me here.

How did Venice show her defiance to Constantinople?

Let me show you.

We built this - St Mark's Square,

perhaps the world's most beautiful urban space.

The surrounding buildings are later, but the piazza itself,

its proportions and shape, was created in the 12th century -

planned, cleared of other buildings and paved over

at the very moment Venice faced financial ruin.

To build this square,

Venetians reached into their own pockets.

The money came from everyone,

from the doge to the ordinary merchant.

For more than 800 years, this square has been a showpiece of Venetian civic pride.

Swept daily at dawn to be immaculate,

we care passionately about this open space.

St Mark's Square was to be the first example

of Venice's powers of defiance and recovery -

symbolised in great architecture.

And Venice had created a great stage-set for its ceremonial life,

an arena for pageantry and celebration of the republic.

The earliest image of the square, from 1496, shows the Feast Day of St Mark,

and it captures the spirit of ritual that grew up around the piazza almost as soon as it was built.

More than anything, the creation of this square showed one thing -

Venice would not be defeated.

And once the square was complete, to further strengthen their resolve,

Venice elected a new doge.

Venetians greeted him with enthusiasm,

even though he was an old man and it was over 20 years since he had been in the public eye -

Enrico Dandolo.

When Dandolo signed his oath of office on 1st January, 1193,

it brought to the office of doge the greatest patriot Venice had ever known.

In his oath, he swore to advance the cause of the Venetian Republic.

But Dandolo would go further.

At last, the Venetians had found a doge whose ambition for the city would stop at nothing.

In Enrico Dandolo, they had a master tactician, a brilliant strategist and a consummate politician.

For me to explain in English is very hard.

And he was always on the look-out to strengthen the Venetian Republic and its trading prospects.

For a hundred years, Christian Europe had waged a war against the Islamic world

for possession of the Holy Land. In particular, Jerusalem.

In the West, these campaigns became known as the Crusades.

But the Fourth Crusade of 1201 was short of ships, manpower and money.

In April that year, the crusaders sailed into the Venetian lagoon

to ask Enrico Dandolo for Venetian backing.

Venice had avoided serious involvement in all the previous Crusades,

but now Dandolo seemed interested.

All of Christendom waited for his response.

Let's think about it.

What did Venice have to gain from a Crusade to Jerusalem?

Would it make the Pope happy? Good.

Everybody will like us? Fine.

But how important is that?

But Dandolo agreed to help.

Venice would build and pay for more ships and more men to sail in them.

In exchange, he demanded a high price - 50% of the conquered land.

It was a hard bargain.

Suddenly, it was Dandolo's Crusade.

This was outrageous - he was hijacking the Crusade - but Dandolo wasn't interested in Jerusalem.

He had another aim in mind.

Dandolo's galleon led the fleet of 480 ships out of the lagoon

on the morning of the 8th November, 1202.

At first, everything went according to the agreed plan,

but then Dandolo changed course.

No longer was Muslim-held Jerusalem their destination.

They would sail instead for Christian Constantinople.

The fleet dropped anchor with Constantinople in their sights.

Now, Dandolo would put the final touches to his plans for revenge

on the city that 30 years before had imprisoned him

and so brutally decimated the population of Venetian traders living within its walls.

The walls of Constantinople

surrounded the city on the land side

and all along the coast.

Over the centuries, they had repelled attacks from the ferocious Bulgars,

the bloodthirsty Saracens and even the vast army of the Russians.

The walls were the most impressive man-made defences

of any city in the world.

The Venetians would launch their attack from the sea

AND from the land.

At the base of the walls,

the crusaders fought with Byzantine soldiers...

..and attempted to break the defences with battering rams.

This was brutal.

Barbaric.

Bloody.

Murder.

But it was clear there was only one answer.

They had to go over the top of the walls.

The attackers threw up scaling ladders,

but they were easy prey for the Byzantine forces.

And now a storm was blowing up.

The Venetian ships were being smashed against each other.

The battle was turning against them.

It was then that one act of mad desperation turned the day.

A man left to plant the Venetian flag on the shore.

It was the doge, Enrico Dandolo.

This roused the Venetians for one last great attack.

They tied their ships in pairs and built towers on the decks.

From the towers, they lashed wooden planks together as bridges onto the ramparts.

The attackers had made it over the walls and into the city.

Once inside the city walls, the Venetians spared no-one.

They murdered old and young.

They raped women,

girls, nuns.

Desecrated churches.

They torched the city.

This was a shameful victory for the Venetians.

And in the great church of Hagia Sophia, now a mosque,

lies the tomb of the man who engineered it all.

He changed the entire course of Venetian history

and the history of the world.

But now almost no-one visits his tomb.

Doge Enrico Dandolo

never made it back to Venice.

But what he sent home would enrich my city

and would change Europe for centuries to come.

The crusaders had destroyed so many treasures of the ancient world,

and what the Venetians saved,

they saved only for their own profit.

The value of goods and money shipped back to Venice is impossible to calculate -

gold, silver, and jewels in immense quantities.

The Basilica of St Mark's became the greatest robbers' den in the world,

an Aladdin's cave of stolen booty and plundered treasure.

The opulent altar screen, the Pala d'Oro, was re-embellished with jewels stolen from Constantinople.

On the outside, the Venetians proudly displayed more stolen treasure.

Great columns in finest marble.

These 4th-century Roman emperors are carved out of porphyry

and originally came from Egypt.

But the crowning glory from Constantinople was the four great bronze horses.

Their origins are lost in the mist of time...

..but legend has it, once they stood in ancient Greece,

testimony to the artistic genius of the classical world.

The statues were more artistically brilliant

than anything Venice had ever dreamed of -

a shining example that Venetian artists would now seek to emulate.

They were symbols of a new era for Venice.

Venice stood on the brink of its golden age,

richer and more powerful than ever before.

It would become home

to some of the most brilliant artists and architects

the world had ever seen.

Subtitles by Alison Haggart BBC Broadcast - 2004

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