A History of Venice

Venice: The City and Its Architecture - Richard Goy
Originally published in hardcover in 1997 - Phaidon

 Part coffee table book, but mostly history tome, Goy's work is exhaustive and comprehensive. What I like most about this rather voluminous history is that it is such an old city, far older than photography - and so Goy uses among other things, paintings, to illustrate the history and architecture of this great city. 


Amazon description - An illustrated survey of the architecture and urban development of Venice. Goy's work includes sections on some of the best-known buildings, including the Basilica of San Marco, the Palazzo Ducale and the Rialto bridge, providing an introduction to the historical background of the city. The author examines the the way in which Venice's unusual topography has influenced the form and type of the city's buildings - discussing important building types such as churches and palaces and examining the middle-class and working-class districts of the city. The buildings are set in historical context with photographs and paintings and prints by some of the artists who have recorded the city fom Carpaccio and Bellini to Ruskin. This text traces the origins of the city, from the end of the Roman Empire when it was no more than a few scattered villages to the built-up city we see today.