scholarly journals The cistern-system of early modern Venice: technology, politics and culture in a hydraulic society

Water History ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Gentilcore
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fresh Water ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
System A ◽  
Water Supply Management ◽  
Early Modern Italy ◽  
Early Modern Venice ◽  
Medical Treatises ◽  
Industrial Needs ◽  
The City

AbstractAt a time when European cities depended on three sources of fresh water for their domestic and industrial needs—rivers, spring-fed aqueducts and groundwater wells—early modern Venice added a fourth possibility: a dense network of cisterns for capturing, filtering and storing rainwater. Venice was not unique in relying on rainwater cisterns; but nowhere in Italy (indeed in Europe) was the approach so systematic and widespread, the city concerned so populous, the technology so sophisticated and the management so carefully regulated as in the lagoon city. To explore Venice’s cistern-system, a range of primary sources (medical treatises, travellers’ accounts, archival records) and the contributions of architectural, medical and social historians, and archaeologists are analysed. The article examines the system’s functioning and management, including the role of the city’s acquaroli or watermen; the maintenance of freshwater quality throughout the city, in the context of broader sanitation measures; and the place of the “wells” and fresh water in daily life in Venice. As a means of teasing out the myriad links between nature, technology and society in early modern Italy, the article concludes with a brief comparison of the politics of water supply management in the very different urban realities of (republican) Venice, (viceregal) Naples and (papal) Rome.

Little Worlds in Motion: Mobility and Space in the Osterie of Early Modern Venice

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 96-117
Author(s):  
Rosa Salzberg
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Modern City ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Early Modern Venice ◽  
The City

Abstract The inns, or osterie, of early modern Venice were located at the heart of the city, which was one the most important hubs of mobility and travel between Europe and the Mediterranean. Close study of the locations, structures, and interiors of the inns shows how they featured centrally in both the long-range itineraries of travelers and migrants as well as smaller-scale circulations of local residents around the city. The intersection of these various trajectories in the space of the inn led to a rich array of social, economic, and cultural exchanges, but also to moments of tension and conflict. As such, a focus on the osterie illuminates the experience of being on the move in this period as well as demonstrating how mobility fundamentally shaped, and was shaped by, the early modern city and its spaces.

5. The ghetto in America

2020 ◽  
pp. 88-117
Author(s):  
Bryan Cheyette
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Great Migration ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
The North ◽  
Social Advancement ◽  
Early Modern Venice ◽  
The City

How did the ‘city within a city’ concept move from early modern Venice to Harlem? ‘The ghetto in America’ looks at Chicago and New York after the African-American Great Migration of 1916 transformed the cities of the north. In prosperous times, the ghetto could be a place of entrepreneurship, culture, and social advancement—qualities seen as ‘ghetto fabulous’. In lean times, already vulnerable inhabitants had little access to loans or housing. Mid-20th-century African-American writers argued about whether they lived in a ‘ghetto’ or not, as some feared that the term limited the life chances of those who were already impoverished and segregated. Music ‘from the ghetto’—the rap of the 1980s and 1990s—blurred the lines between hedonism and dissent, making the ghetto a symbol of both injustice and transgression.

Domestic space and identity: artisans, shopkeepers and traders in sixteenth-century Siena

Urban History ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAULA HOHTI
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Early Modern Italy ◽  
The City

ABSTRACT:Historians of early modern Italy have traditionally viewed the city's public spaces, such as streets, quarters, taverns and marketplaces, as the chief locations in which claims to identity were launched into the broader urban community. Recent studies on the domestic interior, however, have shown that the distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century urban space was much more complex. In this period, private urban houses became sites for an increasing range of social acitvities that varied from informal evening gatherings to large wedding banquets. Focusing on this ‘public’ dimension of the private urban house, this article explores how the middling classes of artisans and shopkeepers used the domestic space to construct identities and to facilitate social relations in sixteenth-century Siena. The aim is to show that in providing a setting for differing forms of economic and social activity, the urban home together with its objects and furnishings may have provided an increasingly important physical location for craftsmen, shop-owners and traders to negotaite individual and collective identities within the broader communities of the city.

Crusade Propaganda in Word and Image in Early Modern Italy: Niccolò Guidalotto’s Panorama of Constantinople (1662)*

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 503-543
Author(s):  
Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
Word And Image ◽  
Golden Horn ◽  
Early Modern Italy ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The City ◽  
Venetian Republic

AbstractThe focus of this article is a vast seventeenth-century panorama of Constantinople, which is an exceptional drawing of the city, currently displayed at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The panorama is an elaborate piece of anti-Ottoman propaganda designed by the Franciscan friar Niccolò Guidalotto da Mondavio. Guidalotto also prepared a large manuscript, held in the Vatican Library, which details the panorama’s meaning and the motivation behind its creation. It depicts the city as seen from across the Golden Horn in Galata, throwing new light on both the city and the relationships between the rival Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire. It also trumpets the unalloyed Christian zeal of Niccolò Guidalotto and serves as a fascinating example of visual Crusade propaganda against the Ottomans in the early modern period.

The Inquisition, Professing Jews, and Christian Images in Seventeenth-Century Modena

2012 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Aron-Beller
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Active Period ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Early Modern Italy ◽  
Religious Paintings ◽  
The City

In seventeenth-century Italy, Christian relics and images were scattered through urban spaces, not only because the faithful were expected to acknowledge and touch them, but because their moving through city streets in processions celebratedcommunitas, the sense of belonging that was so much part of early modern civic existence.The Inquisitorial archive in Modena holds at least twelveprocessiagainst professing Jews (who lived for the most part in the city capital or in smaller Jewish communities scattered through the duchy) for the offence of desecrating Christian images during its most active period of prosecution between 1598 and 1640. Denunciations accused Jews of removing crucifixes from walls, stoning or tampering Christian statues and religious paintings, and failing to show the necessary respect to images carried through the streets. This paper explores the frequency of the image desecration charges against Jews in early modern Italy and in particular the duchy of Modena, the pivotal impact of internal Christian processes about their own images and whether these objects did in fact have inherent or stable meanings for Jews at this time.

scholarly journals Plague Hospitals: Public Health for the City in Early Modern Venice

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-145
Author(s):  
Jane L. Stevens Crawshaw (book author) ◽  
John Christopoulos (review author)
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Venice ◽  
The City
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