072. Guess Who's Back?

Venice had won a crushing naval victory against Genoa in the summer of 1258. But that just meant that the Genoese needed to look for new allies. And Genoa’s new best friend is an old friend of our story: one of our former protagonists, who has been in the background of our narrative for the past half a century, is about to take centre stage again. But even when faced with a potential disaster, Venice will find a way to turn it into yet another triumph.

Background reading for this episode is very similar to last time, since this is really just a continuation of the same story:

Other than the general histories of Venice, for more detail about this episode try:

“Il Grifo e il Leone: Genova e Venezia in Lotta per il Mediterraneo” by Antonio Musarra

“The Black Sea: Trade and Navigation (13th to 15th Centuries)” by Michel Balard

“Genoa and the Genoese: 928 to 1528” by Steven Epstein

“Venice: The remarkable history of the lagoon city” by Dennis Romano

“Le Repubbliche Marinare” by Ermanno Orlando

“City of Fortune: How Venice won and lost a naval empire” by Roger Crowley

“Les Chroniques des Veneciens” by Martin da Canal, which you can read in its original old French, with a fairly old-fashioned Italian translation, here: https://archive.org/details/lacronacaveneta00zongoog/page/268/mode/2up

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Intro and outro music is Primavera from Vivaldi’s Le Quattro Stagioni, used under Creative Commons licence from musopen.org