One of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s first institutes, the Institute for the History of the Venetian State and Society dates back to 1955. Its main purpose for decades has been to make a fundamental contribution to the study of the history of Venice through the collection of documentation, research, the organisation of scientific meetings and the publication of the journal Studi Veneziani. In this sense, the Institute is a firm reference point both nationally and internationally. The Institute also looks after the history and memory of the Cini Foundation. The Institute is therefore a place of historical research, but it is also an expression of a peculiar culture of the relationship with the past, in the constant endeavour to reconstruct, interpret and reflect on a place, Venice, unique in the history and imagination of the world.

 

Due to its exceptional length and complexity, the history of Venice sums up several histories: Byzantine history, the history of Italy, the history of the Mediterranean and European history. Venice is important for all areas gravitating around the Mediterranean, from its origins until its demise in 1797. In many respects, a unique history on a global scale. Venice was a state on the border between civilisations, in constant confrontation with the Byzantine Empire and then the Ottoman Empire and Islam in general, like no other European state. For centuries Venice was an Italian state free of foreign subordination, a European diplomatic pole and an indispensable artistic and cultural reference point.

 

The Institute promotes the epistemological paradigm of Venice as history, a second programmatic pillar alongside the more traditional History of Venice, to reaffirm and share on an international (but obviously also national) level the uniqueness of the Venetian story in history, art and culture. Venice, after all, is first and foremost historicity, in which the wonder of its artistic being flows; it was in the 15th century, as it is today. An extraordinary urban, architectural and artistic being that has developed over a long time, a time that is difficult to comprehend today; a path of choices that derives from the absolute mastery of both the lagoon and maritime environment and the experiences of encounter/clash matured in the East and in the West, from the introjection of meanings of distant places, cultures, religions and spirits.

 

In this sense, the reflection on the mental and cultural geographies relating to the wider spaces of the world towards which Venice has projected and self-perceived itself in its millenary history is pre-eminent. A kind of maximal geography of Venice’s phenomenology that derives from Venice’s historical familiarity with places in the Mediterranean and those beyond the Mediterranean. A world geography in which Venice finds itself to be the westernmost point of an economic system based on the Mediterranean-China vector, and to be the gateway to the East for Western Europe, generally for the West. This world of Venice is the framework within which to reason, in dialogue between historians, about the so-called intertwined/entangled histories with Venice at their head, or with Venice in them. Besides being a paradigm, Venice as history is above all a cultural proposal, in which history/historicality becomes the connection of all that Venice has been and is, in the past and in the present; and a pretext to relaunch the Venice of the 21st century.

 

History
The Institute for the History of the Venetian State and Society was founded in 1955. The Institute was directed from 1955 to 1963 by Gian Piero Bognetti, Professor of History of Italian Law at the Università Statale di Milano; by Agostino Pertusi, Professor of Byzantine Philology at the Università Cattolica di Milano, from 1963 to 1979; by Gaetano Cozzi, Professor of Modern History and History of Political and Social Institutions at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, from 1979 to 1999; by Gino Benzoni, Professor of History of Historiography at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, from 1999 to 2020; from 2021, by Egidio Ivetic, Professor of Modern History and History of the Mediterranean at the University of Padua.
Numerous research initiatives, conferences and publications have been realised in over 65 years of the Institute’s history. Many great names in Italian and world historiography have frequented it. On a publishing level, mention must be made of Storia della civiltà veneziana (Florence, Sansoni, 1979, 3 volumes; summary of 11 other volumes, 1955-1964) and the monumental Storia di Venezia (Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, 1991-2007, 12 volumes).

 

Studi Veneziani

“Studi veneziani” is an interdisciplinary study journal dedicated to the history of Venice and the Venetian state and the expressions of Venetian civilisation in the forms of politics, institutions, society, culture, art and literature. “Venetian Studies’ publishes articles, documents, notes and reviews. It was founded as the Institute’s Bulletin in 1959 and has been published under this name since 1965. The journal was directed by Gian Piero Bognetti, Agostino Pertusi, Gaetano Cozzi and Gino Benzoni. It is currently directed by Egidio Ivetic, director of the Institute of the History of the Venetian State and Society.

‘Studi Veneziani’, starting with the first issue published.

 

 

of “Studi Veneziani” formerly “Bollettino dell’Istituto di Storia della Società e dello Stato Veneziano”.

Studi Veneziani

 

 

It is possible to consult the contents of  «Studi Veneziani», Downloadable PDF version:  List of contents «Studi Veneziani»  «Bollettino dell’Istituto di Storia della Società e dello Stato Veneziano»  Download the pdf of all the summaries of di Studi Veneziani