An Economic History of Venice

Today was our third day in Venice and we started off at a site where our speaker was fixing some of the damage from the November flooding. He spoke to us about some of the new materials he was using and about all of the damage this flooding caused.

After visiting the building undergoing renovations, we moved on to the Doge's Palace. We walked through several different areas, like the prison, the meeting chambers and several galleries. All of the artwork throughout the palace was incredibly intricate, especially the ceilings (pictured below).

The article I presented on today was all about the Economic History of Venice. This paper described how Venice is the birthplace of capitalism and many ideas and tools are still in place today. It discussed the impact of shipbuilding, trade routes and the age of decadence.  I feel that this article related to today's activitiess because we could see how decadent the Doge's Palace was with all of the gold detailing, which the article states that silk, gold, brocades and costume jewelry extremely popular around this time.