Museo Civico; Formerly Palazzo Ferrara,
later Fondaco dei Turchi.
Private owners of vessels were not allowed to send cargoes to ports to which Venice sent fleets. Vessels were built and fitted out by the State, and put up at auction to be bidden for by the merchants, the voyages all being made according to regulations, and a good share of the profits paid to the State. Private owners were licensed before freighting a ship, and no ship not commanded by a Venetian was permitted to sail from the lagoons. Ships of war guarded the mouths of the rivers, and all foreign vessels were liable to inspection. All kinds of goods carried in Venetian ships were obliged to be taken to Venice before they could be sent to any other port. Thus it became a great mart for the merchandise of all countries, and we can scarcely imagine the enormous supplies of costly and magnificent Oriental products which filled her storehouses, and were thence distributed all over the western and northern world in exchange for other goods as well as for gold. Her commerce with Nuremberg was important, and there was a weekly post between the two cities in 1505, when Albert Dürer made the journey to Venice.
Her unique position made Venice the chief market for all the East, and her supremacy in the Levant forbade all rivals to attempt competing with her; but if she thus deprived other nations of the privileges of commerce, she protected them from the Turk. She was a bulwark that could neither be ignored nor overthrown. Every branch of commerce was made tributary to her, and her coffers were always full. She expended her wealth at home, encouraging her workers in metals, glass, and mosaics, and the manufactures of silk and wool, as well as in cherishing the fine arts and improving the city.
From the beginning of the thirteenth century so great a number of merchants periodically visited Venice that no sufficient provision could be made for them in the public houses, and the question as to how and where they could live was solved by the establishment of the Fondachi, where they were lodged, free of cost, after reporting to the proper magistrate, and showing their purpose in coming to Venice. Warehouses were attached to the Fondachi, supplied with weighers and keepers to attend to the storing and care of merchandise.
The Germans, Armenians, Moors, and Turks, all had these Fondachi, as well as the Tuscans and other Italians. A superb palace on the Grand Canal, which has been restored, and is now the Museo Civico, was given to the Turks. It is nearly as old as the Ducal Palace, and very remarkable. But as the Turks were infidels, the windows were walled up, the rooms thus being lighted only from the court. A Catholic warder closed the doors at sunset. No women or children were allowed to enter, and no Ottoman was permitted to lodge elsewhere. Greeks and Syrians were allowed the utmost freedom in all parts of the city.
The Jews were not liked, and many regulations were made for them. At times they were excluded from Venice, but their aptitude in all matters of trade made them almost a necessity. Indeed, they had the monopoly of money changing, and the Senate found that they must be at hand. Many regulations were made as to where they should live, concerning certain badges they must wear, forbidding them to own houses or lands, to enter any profession save that of medicine, to open their doors between sunset and sunrise, or to go out at all on holidays. They were not permitted to have a synagogue, and a burial-place was given them grudgingly.
So fully did the rulers of Venice appreciate the importance and dignity of her commerce that they permitted the Fondachi to be splendidly decorated, and by the best artists. Nothing can give a better idea of the wealth and luxury of the Venetian merchants than the following extract from Mutinelli:—
"When the news of the victory of Lepanto reached Venice, the Germans were the first who wished to celebrate it by a splendid illumination in their Fondaco on the Rialto. All the other merchants followed this example; and those who most distinguished themselves were the jewellers, the Tuscans, and the mercers. The well-known portico of the Rialto, where the drapers' shops are, was hung with turquoise-blue fabrics, spangled with gold and lined with scarlet. Each shop had its decoration; there were panoplies of Oriental arms taken from the Turks, and in the midst of these trophies were to be seen pictures by Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Sebastian del Piombo, Titian, and Pordenone. At the entrance of the bridge an arch was raised on which the arms of the allied powers were represented quartered on the same scutcheon. Banners and festoons hung from every arch and every window; torches and silver candelabra placed on every projection illuminated the streets, and turned the night into a bright and splendid day."
And in a manuscript in the library of St. Mark is written:—