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

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.

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5. The ghetto in America

The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction ◽

10.1093/actrade/9780198809951.003.0005 ◽

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.

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

Water History ◽

10.1007/s12685-021-00288-2 ◽

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.

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Leakage, Contagion, and Containment in Early Modern Venice

Contamination and Purity in Early Modern Art and Architecture ◽

10.5117/9789462988699_ch07 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Lisa Pon

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Spatial Dynamics ◽

The Mediterranean ◽

Early Modern Venice ◽

The City

Two well-known architectural types of enclosure in early modern Venice – the Jewish Ghetto and the plague hospitals or lazaretti – are examined within the spatial dynamics of quarantine and the larger geographic sphere of the Mediterranean. Architectural and urbanistic mechanisms for maintaining purity against influences the Christian Venetians understood as harmful, the ghetto and the lazaretto worked to visually recognize, bureaucratically identify, and physically seclude ‘dangerous’ individuals. Both were also porous: the ghetto was open to all during daytime hours, when Jews were also allowed to exit into the city, and the lazaretto’s population grew and shrank as new people sickened and patients recovered or died. This ‘leakage’ broke through any ideal of containment, and could be productive, benign or malign.

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