Italian Venice

A History

Bosworth R. J. B.

In this elegant book Richard Bosworth explores Venice – not the glorious Venice of the Venetian Republic, but from the fall of the Republic in 1797 and the Risorgimento up through the present day. Bosworth looks at the glamour and squalour of the belle epoque and the dark underbelly of modernization, the two world wars, and the far-reaching oppressions of the fascist regime, through to the "Disneylandification" of Venice and the tourist boom, the worldwide attention of the biennale and film festival, and current threats of subsidence and flooding posed by global warming. He draws out major themes: the increasingly anachronistic but deeply embedded Catholic Church, and the two faces of modernization, consumerism versus culture. Bosworth interrogates not just Venice's history but its meanings, and how the city's past has been co-opted to suit present and sometimes ulterior aims. Venice, he shows, is a city where its histories as well as its waters ripple on the surface.

About the Author

R. J. B. Bosworth is senior research fellow in history, Jesus College, Oxford. A renowned Italianist, he is the author of more than two dozen books on Mussolini, fascism, and Italy's twentieth-century experience. He lives in Oxford, UK.

Reviews

"Bosworth brings a fresh eye to Venice's history, telling us lots that we didn't know already and providing a masterly overview allied with numerous fascinating details. The account is provocative at times – painting a picture of a city which at the same time seems unaffected by history, but that was also profoundly altered by the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the forces which have marked the last 150 years or so of this remarkable but troubled place" – John Foot, author of "Modern Italy"

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