Over the course of its history, Venice has been much more than just the city of dreams and death as which it is known today. In its heyday, the city in the lagoon was not only one of the richest but also one of the most powerful cities in the world, and behaved for centuries in the style of a major European power. Arne Karsten gives a clear, knowledgeable account of the city’s political, economic and artistic fortunes – from its modest beginnings to the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797, and how it ‘rose from the ashes’ as a unique city of culture.