CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OF VENICE

The course will present an introduction to Venetian contemporary history, from the fall of the Republic to present times. It will address the major crucial turns in the city’s history, with a particular attention to its social, economical and urban dimensions. Besides the reconstruction of a timeline of the main political events, the course will aim at the critical comprehension of contemporary Venice through a series of in-depth thematic focuses, namely on the so called “exodus” of the population, on touristification, and on the environmental challenges that the city and the lagoon are facing nowadays.

By the end of the course students will have become familiar with the main historical events undergone in the city of Venice in the last two centuries, as well as with the main challenges it still faces nowadays.

No prerequisites are necessary to attend the course.

- The fall of the Republic and the first foreign dominations
- Venetian Risorgimento and the Revolution of ’48-’49
- Italian Venice: industries, economy, society. The “neo-insular” period, until WWI.
- The expansion on the mainland: Marghera and the “Greater Venice”
- Fascist Venice and WWII
- Exodus
- Touristification
- Environmental challenges

J. B. Bosworth, "Italian Venice. A History", Yale University Press, 2014.

Additional materials.
One text among:

- Zucconi, G. (2022). Planning Venice after the Italian Unification: The Development of a Space-based Identity. Planning Perspectives, 37(3), 583-614.
- Fregolent, L., & Vettoretto, L. (2017). Genesis of a fluid metropolitan space, in Balducci, A., Fedeli, V., & Curci, F., Post-Metropolitan Territories (pp. 75-94), Routledge.
- Salerno, G. M. (2022). Touristification and displacement. The long-standing production of Venice as a tourist attraction. City, 26(2-3), 519-541.
- Chapter 9 (Restoration Comedies) or chapter 10 (Ships and fools) from Davis, R. C., & Marvin, G. R. (2004). Venice, the tourist maze: A cultural critique of the world’s most touristed city. University of California Press.
- Scheppe, W. (2020). The Ground-Rent of Art and Exclusion from the City. The exemplary quality of Venice’s singularity, in The Property Issue: Politics of Space and Data. ARCH+
- Salerno, G. M., & Russo, A. P. (2022). Venice as a short-term city. Between global trends and local lock-ins. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 30(5), 1040-1059.

Oral exam. The exam will focus on the understanding of the main historical events and key concepts discussed during the course.

Lessons and collective discussion.

oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Cities, infrastructure and social capital" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development