LINKTV France 24 October 8, 2014
But this grand illusion, whose stage was the city itself, was founded in reality. By the 1500s, venice claimed 1,000 years of history as a free and independent republic. The chill wind of economic change the decline of empire had not yet touched its selfconfidence. It was still rich in trade and crafts. Its imperial possessions still spread out across the mediterranean and into the italian mainland, as here at vicenza. So the theater and the spectacle were props for a powerful empire which had survived for so long by hardheaded business acumen, by skillful diplomacy, and when those failed, by ...