The very name of Venezia, or Venice, by which we now know the city of the lagoons, is in its origin the name, not of a town, but of a country. Upon the proper comprehension of this curious fact depends a proper comprehension of much that is essential in the early history of the city and of the Republic.
The rich and fertile valley of the Po had for its commercial centre from a very remote period the town of Mediolanum or Milan. But its port for the time being, though often altered, lay always on the Adriatic. That sea derives its name, indeed, from the town of Hatria (later corrupted into Adria), which was the earliest centre of the Po valley traffic. Hatria and its sister town of Spina, however, gave way in imperial Roman times to Padua, and again in the days of the lower empire to Aquileia, near Trieste, and to Altinum, on the mainland just opposite Torcello. Padua in particular was a very prosperous and populous town under the early emperors ; it gathered into itself the surplus weath of the whole Po valley.
For a long time the new town was still spoken of as Rialto, as indeed a part of it is by its own inhabitants to the present day; but gradually the general name of Venezia, which belonged properly to the entire Republic, grew to be confined in usage to its capital, and most of us now know the city only as Venice.
Pepin was driven off in 809. The Doge's Palace was transferred to Rialto, and raised on the site of the existing building (according to tradition) in 819. Angelus Participotius was the first Doge to occupy it. From that period forward to the French Revolution, one palace after another housed the Duke of the Venetians on the same site. This was the real nucleus of the town of Venice, though the oldest part lay near the Rialto bridge. Malamocco did not entirely disappear, however, till 1107. The silting up of the harbour of Ravenna, the chief port of the Adriatic in late Roman times, and long an outlier of the Byzantine empire, contributed greatly, no doubt, to the rise of Venice: while the adoption of Rivo Alto with its deep navigable channel as the capital marks the gradual growth of an external commerce.
The Republic which thus sprang up among the islands of the lagoons was at first confined to the little archipelago itself, though it still looked upon Aquileia and Altinum as its mother cities, and still acknowledged in ecclesiastical matters the supremacy of the Patriarch of Grado. After the repulse of King Pepin, however, the Republic began to recognise its own strength and the importance of its position, and embarked slowly at first, on a career of commerce and then of conquest. Its earliest acquisitions of territory were on the opposite Slavonic coast of Istria and Dalmatia; gradually its trade with the east led it, at the beginning of the Crusades, to acquire territory in the Levant and the Greek Archipelago. This eastern extension was mainly due to the conquest of Constantinople by Doge Enrico Dandolo during the Fourth Crusade (1204), an epoch-making event in the history of Venice which must constantly be borne in mind in examining her art-treasures. The little outlying western dependency had vanquished the capital of the Christian Eastern Empire to which it once belonged. The greatness of Venice dates from this period; it became the chief carrier between the east and the west; its vessels exported the surplus wealth of the Lombard plain, and brought in return, not only the timber and stone of Istria and Dalmatia, but the manufactured wares of Christian Constantinople, the wines of the Greek isles, and the oriental silks, carpets and spices of Mohammedan Egypt, Arabia and Bagdad. The Crusades, which impoverished the rest of Europe, doubly enriched Venice: she had the carrying and transport traffic in her own hands; and her conquests gave her the spoil of many eastern cities.
It is important to bear in mind, also, that the Venetian Republic (down to the French Revolution), was the one part of western Europe which never at any time formed a portion of any Teutonic Empire, Gothic, Lombard, Frank, or Saxon. Alone in the west, it carried on unbroken the traditions of the Roman empire, and continued its corporate life without Teutonic adulteration. Its peculiar position as the gate between the east and west made a deep impress upon its arts and its architecture. The city remained long in friendly intercourse with the Byzantine realm; and an oriental tinge is thus to be found in all its early buildings and mosaics. St. Mark's in particular is based on St. Sophia at Constantinople; the capitals of its columns in both are strikingly similar; even Arab influence and the example of Cairo (or rather of early Alexandria), are visible in many parts of the building. Another element which imparts oriental tone to Venice is the number of imported works of art from Greek churches. Some of these the Republic frankly stole; others it carried away in good faith during times of stress to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Mohammedan conquerors. The older part of Venice is thus to some extent a museum of applied antiquities; the bronze horses from Constantinople over the portal of St. Mark's, the pillars of St. John of Acre on the south facade ; the Greek lions of the Arsenal, the four porphyry emperors near the Doge's palace are cases in point; and similar instances will meet the visitor everywhere. Many bodies of Greek or eastern saints were also carried off from Syria or Asia Minor to preserve them from desecration at the hands of the infidel ; and with these saints came their legends, unknown elsewhere in the west; so that the mosaics and sculptures based on them give a further note of orientalism to much of Venice. It may also be noted that the intense Venetian love of colour, and the eye for colour which accompanies it, are rather eastern than western qualities. This peculiarity of a pure colour-sense is extremely noticeable both in Venetian architecture and Venetian painting.