The volume addresses the issue of political celebration in early modern Venice. Dealing with processional orders and iconographic programs, historiographical narratives and urbanistic canons, stylistic features and diplomatic accounts, the interdisciplinary contributions gathered in these pages aim to question the performative effectiveness and the social consistency of the so called 'myth' of Venice: a system of symbols, beliefs and meanings offering a self-portrait of the ruling elite, the Venetian patriciate. In order to do so, the volume calls for a spatial turn in Venetian studies, blurring the boundaries between institutionalized and unofficial ceremonial spaces and considering their ongoing interaction in representing the rule of the Serenissima. The twelve chapters move from Palazzo Ducale to the Venetian streets and from the city of Venice to its dominions, thus widening considerably the range of social and political actors and audiences involved in the analysis. Such multifocal perspective allows us to challenge the very idea of a single 'myth' of Venice.

The Republic of Venice is remembered chiefly as a maritime state, yet for most of the fifteenth century it exerted direct control over a substantial hinterland. Building upon recent research investigating the nature of relations between Venice and its territories, this study explores the policies employed by the Republic, and the extent to which these succeeded in endowing a heterogeneous territorial conglomeration with cohesion and unity.