The beginning of the sixteenth century represents the century of the great turning point in Venetian history: the republic loses maritime hegemony and political weight in Italy and Europe. The Serenissima begins by facing the Ottoman Empire for a second time, coming out defeated again. The War of the League of Cambrai, then, even risks destroying it.

Along with the dominion of the sea, however, the maritime identity and culture built up over the centuries evaporated. It was not only a question of having to share traffic and naval routes, previously exclusive, but of the crisis of the civilization on which Venice had built itself and its fortune, having failed, during the fifteenth century, to reach a territorial dimension adequate to the new challenges.

No longer a maritime power, Venice forgot that it was even a maritime state and retreated into “armed neutrality”: the republic began to decline.

Federico Moro, Venice in the storm 1499-1517 the crisis of the Serenissima, LEG, Gorizia 2020.