Venice from the Water: Architecture and Myth in an Early Modern City

摘要

'In dialogue with the natural properties of their aquatic space,' proposes Daniel Savoy, 'the builders of medieval and early modern Venice devised a series of water-oriented urbanistic practices to shape the visual and metaphoric image of their city' (p.i). His book is an essay in the subjectivity of perception rather than a work of architectural history. It draws mainly on well-known primary and secondary works — the author has dipped into archival sources, but tends to treat routine findings as unexpected. The book covers a very broad timespan between 1200 and 1800, within which it seeks to develop its 'theoretical framework'. A short epilogue carries the subject forward into the twentieth century.