Venice: Pure City by Peter Ackroyd

 

Venice: Pure City
by Peter Ackroyd

Venice is perhaps one of the most fascinating and mysterious cities in the world.  Having been fortunate enough to have visited this city on the lagoon, I have been eagerly looking for a book that would tell me the history of this magical and mystical place.  So when I discovered this book at B&N, I could not pass it up.  This floating city was the center of trade for more than a thousand years. Venice once housed the largest shipbuilding facility in the world, dominated the sea trade throughout the Mediterranean . This book will provide you a unique view of Venice from various perspectives.  Noted author and biographer, Peter Ackroyd, interweaves history with impressions on a host of topics about living in Venice: the light and color, Carnival, prisons, prostitutes, death, the Venetian republic's extraordinarily long existence, its artists, and the claustrophobic life of the city.  He covers the basics of Venetian geography, hydrology, and climate before turning to its history and architecture.

If you are planning to visit Venice anytime soon, this would be a great book to pick up and read before you travel.