References
- History Walks Venice.
- Newsletter “Venetian Stories“.
- Curiosità Veneziane
- Pavana alla Veneziana performed by Angelo Branduardi (youtube)
Transcript
Venice no longer exists as an independent state, but for over a millennium Venice was an important European nation. It was also a rather odd one at that.
The Republic of Venice was one of a kind.
Yet, there is apparently no History of Venice podcast.
I will try to alleviate this deficiency, as time and work permit.
The work that might limit the time available for a podcast is History Walks Venice, where I do, surprise, history walks in the city of Venice.
What I do there is almost ad-hoc, on-site, in-person podcast episodes, so why not register some of the stories I tell my guests on the tours, and share them online.
This means that this podcast will not be a chronological narrative, as most other history podcasts are. Each episode will be a more or less self-contained story.
Most other podcasts take the chronological path. I won’t, at least not initially, because it doesn’t match the way my primary work is organised.
I will, nevertheless, do half a dozen initial episodes drawing the long lines of the history of Venice.
If the unbelievable should happen, and this podcast one day becomes my main effort, I might try the chronological approach, but eventually the decisive factor for the form of the podcast is what pays my rent.
Material conditions often determine the course of history, in matters small and large. This podcast is no different.
Personal introduction
So who am I to take on this challenge?
My name is René Seindal, and I’m Danish. I’ve lived in Venice for fifteen years, and in other parts of Italy for long periods before that.
I hold a master’s degree in History from the University of Copenhagen, where I have also studied Italian, computer science and mathematics.
My master’s thesis in History was about the Sicilian mafia, and in particular the entanglement between the mafia, politics and the economy in the post-war period. It was published in Danish in 1993, and in English in 1997.
I have in the intervening period done rather diverse things. I have worked on the websites of a major Danish newspaper, and as an IT consultant. Changing tack a bit, I also ran a kayaking company in Venice for over a decade.
When that experience came to an end, I returned to my roots and started doing history tours for tourists in Venice.
During one of the very first lessons at the Department of History in Copenhagen, the professor told us straight away that History was a bread-less subject, and that most of us would end up doing other things, where, however, the generalist techniques learned while studying history would serve us well.
She wasn’t wrong.
Most of what I’ve done since has been outside the sphere of historical research, often in entirely different walks of life, but the things I learned during my history studies have been useful in almost every endeavour I have undertaken.
When I returned to my original passion for history, it was the first time ever I tried to make a living out of what I had studied the most. My great fortune was that I could do it on my own terms and in my own way, with very few external constraints.
That is a rare privilege in our modern world, where the course of our lives is too often decided by others, who usually don’t have our best interests at heart.
On a more personal level, I’m married to a Venetian girl. She’s not going to leave Venice ever, so neither am I. We don’t have children, but we have two ageing rescue dogs whom we serve faithfully and diligently.
Caveats
A few caveats.
I’ve never done podcasting before, and I have absolutely no relevant experience beyond listening to them, which I do a lot.
I have never done audio recordings before. I have done the occasional radio interview or TV appearance, but that is different.
My wife regularly tells me that my speech is slurry, and that I have a slight lisp. Knowing that, I will do my best to speak as clearly and understandably as I can.
Since I definitely have room for improvements, I’ll be delighted if you have any suggestions, corrections or constructive criticism, which can help me get better.
Comments are open on the website, and I’m on Mastodon, BlueSky and Signal. There’s even an email address. Just imagine!
The initial podcast outline
I’ve already hinted at how this podcast will be structured.
After this introductory episode, I will do some episodes drawing the long lines of the history of Venice, and then I will switch to the individual stories approach.
The next episode will be a very cursory overview of the two thousand years of Venetian history.
The next handful of episodes will go a bit deeper, with each episode covering the main developments over a few centuries each. That will take us from the Roman and Byzantine periods, up to the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797, and then through what has happened since.
Once we have established a basic chronology, following episodes will dig much deeper into specific events, individuals or themes, without being bound to a strictly chronological narrative.
Just like the email newsletter, this podcast will be all over the place, and it won’t be necessary to listen to the episodes in order.
Imaging a clothesline with pieces of paper attached here and there. That is what I’m aiming for.
The initial episodes define a timeline, on which I can then hang the all later episodes.
As a listener, you should be able to walk up to the line, and start with any piece of paper anywhere on the line.
Other resources
My main activity is History Walks Venice — at historywalksvenice.com — where I do tours and walks in Venice explaining the history of the city based on what we see on the streets.
If you ever come to Venice, I’d love to have you on one of my tours.
I usually talk peoples’ ears off, so be warned. My tours are for people who are actively interested.
All my groups are small, at most six or eight persons because I want you to ask questions. We learn much more from a dialogue than from a monologue. So, no microphones and no earplugs on my tours.
Venice is soaked in history, and often there’s more to talk about within a two-hundred meter walk than can be squeezed into a two-hour talk.
Much of my research for the tours ends up as articles on HistoryWalksVenice.com, where there are by now over two hundred articles, newsletters, chronologies, sources and translations.
My irregular newsletter “Venetian Stories” will probably become episodes on this podcast too, for those who prefer an audio version of the newsletter.
Whenever I find something particularly interesting or useful, I usually publish it on the website, even in the original Venetian or Italian. When possible, I translate the sources into English to make them available to a wider public.
In some cases, I do separate websites, like for the Curiosità Veneziane by Giuseppe Tassini. This is a lexicon of Venetian place-names, first published in 1863, with a plethora of little stories about what has happened in each place. Have the book as searchable a website allows me to have the lexicon on my phone at any time. The site is on curiosita.historywalksvenice.com.
The podcast website at VenetianStories.com will host the episodes, show-notes and working transcripts. Everything else resulting from my preparatory work will go on the History Walks Venice website.
There won’t be any advertising on the podcast, except me pitching my walking tours repeatedly.
The intro music
The music at the start of the episode is a Pavana alla Veneziana, composed by Joan Ambrosio Dalza, and published in 1508 by Ottaviano Petrucci. It is music for a slow processional dance, which was quite popular in the early Renaissance.
It is performed here by Angelo Branduardi, from the album “Futuro Antico V — Musica della Serenissima“.
Leave a Reply