In The Light

Title

In The Light

Artist

Andrew Soundarajan

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

The view from Venice's Rialto Bridge at twilight. A gondolier plies a a gondola with visitors passing through reflected light.

Venice is arguably the most unique city in the world and certainly one of the most beautiful. It also one of the most unlikeliest that ever came to be. In the 5th century, what was to one day to become Venice was marsh land with sandy areas coming from silt deposits carried from melting snow in the Alps. From the 4th century the Roman Empire was in decline. Invaders started to take advantage of that, including the Goths in AD 402. In AD 452, Attila the Hun and his invaders swept in from Asia and besieged the ancient Roman city of Aquileia, which is set near the Adriatic at the edge of lagoons. When the city finally fell, many of the survivors fled to the marsh land in the lagoons to survive. After the death of Attila, some returned back to their razed villages. However, with each subsequent invader, more and more fled to the marshes.

In AD 466, the Venetians elected their their first form of government. At this time, Venice was essentially a collection of small island communities and remained so for several centuries. Eventually it became a major maritime power and by the 13th century one of the largest cities in western Europe. During that time, Marco Polo, one of the most famous Venetians travelled to Central Asia and China and recorded it in his writings. With the wealth from trading, the Venetians started the construction of what would become the Venice we know today.

Leading into its peak and beyond, Venice created a free republic that lasted for a thousand years and would serve as an inspiration for other people who desired freedom, including the Founding Fathers of the United States. John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers, talks about Venice in his 1787 work � A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. In it he draws attention to the republic of Venice existing longer than Rome , Sparta or any other that is known in history. He also emphasizes the checks and balances that were set up to prevent excessive power accumulating in any one person.

Constructing a city on marshes is an engineering marvel. In the course of building the city, tens of millions of trees were driven into the marshes and water as wooden piles. These were driven to the clay and served as the support upon which the city was built. On the piles platforms were installed and on these the buildings were built. With the wood submerged in the water, they did not decay and have held strong for hundreds of years. The wood for this came from as far away as Slovenia and Croatia, sometimes depleting whole forests. One building alone, the Santa Maria Della Salute church, required over 1.1 million wooden piles to be driven into the ground in a process that took over two years to complete.

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February 6th, 2017

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