A Hello! magazine history of Venice

When Napoleon Bonaparte captured Venice in 1797, he extinguished what had been the most successful regime in the history of the western world. The Venetian Republic had lasted over 1,000 years — longer than ancient Rome — without a revolution, a coup d’état or a successful foreign invasion. Yet after 1797 it was never to be independent again: it was given to Austria, taken back by France, allotted once more to Austria and finally, in 1866, handed over to the young Kingdom of Italy.

Most visitors to Venice are interested in its distant past, in the struggles to build a city on the mudbanks, in the glories of its gothic architecture, in the scuole decorated by Carpaccio and Tintoretto, even in the decadence of the 18th century with its alliterative seductiveness of carnivals and Canaletto, courtesans and Casanova. Yet less colourful eras must have their historians, and R.J.B. Bosworth, who has written distinguished books on Mussolini and Fascism, is a knowledgeable guide to the last century and a half.