Venice’s Marriage to the Sea: Ritual, Representation, and Environmental Transformation

As longue-durée historian Fernand Braudel emphasized, Venice’s beauty can be considered as the material synthesis of the medieval Mediterranean culture that flourished thanks to its connecting water element. In Venice, the accumulation of wealth found its representation in its architectural majesty, which has survived the end of the City’s political-economic prominence. The Marriage of the Sea was the highlight in the ceremonial calendar of the 188 “Republic of Processions,” as Venice has been called (Muir, 1981), due to the variegated and unifying system of state-building feasts which celebrated outstanding events in the history of the Republic.

Today, the marriage between Venice and the sea acquires a new meaning as the promise of a wished-for solution to the threatening consequences of climate change, one that should occur as part of an effort to find a new balance between culture and nature.

To read more, download our webzine Silkroadia V.3 and read ‘Venice’s Marriage to the Sea: Ritual, Representation, and Environmental Transformation’ written by Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Heiner Krellig (professor of philosophy of science and professor of art history at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, respectively)