Venetian Arsenal

The Venetian Arsenal () is a complex of former shipyards and armories clustered together in the city of Venice in northern Italy. Owned by the state, the Arsenal was responsible for the bulk of the Venetian Republic's naval power from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period. It was "one of the earliest large-scale industrial enterprises in history".

Overview

thumb|left|Venetian Arsenal towers

thumb|left|The Arsenal of Venice, 1797, by Gianmaria Maffioletti ([[Museo Storico Navale|Naval History Museum)]]

Construction of the Arsenal began around 1104, during Venice's republican era. It became the largest industrial complex in Europe before the Industrial Revolution, spanning an area of about , or about 15 percent of Venice. Surrounded by a rampart, laborers and shipbuilders regularly worked within the Arsenal, building ships that sailed from the city's port. With high walls shielding the Arsenal from public view and guards protecting its perimeter, different areas of the Arsenal each produced a particular prefabricated ship part or other maritime implement, such as munitions, rope, and rigging. These parts could then be assembled into a ship in as little as one day. An exclusive forest owned by the Arsenal navy, in the Montello hills area of Veneto, provided the Arsenal's wood supply.

The Arsenal produced the majority of Venice's maritime trading vessels, which generated much of the city's economic wealth and power, lasting until the fall of the Venetian Republic to Napoleon in 1797. It is located in the Castello district of Venice, and it is now owned by the state. also developed new firearms at an early date, beginning with bombards in the 1370s and numerous small arms for use against the Genoese a few years later. The muzzle velocity of handguns was improved beyond that of the crossbow, creating armor-piercing rounds. Arsenal-produced arms were also noteworthy for their multi-purpose utility; the Venetian condottieri leader, Bartolomeo Colleoni, is usually given credit as being the first to mount the Arsenal's new lighter-weight artillery on mobile carriages for field use.

thumb|left|Stone [[Lion of Saint Mark above the main gate at the Arsenal]]

thumb|right|180px|Venetian Arsenal main gate

The Arsenal's main gate, the Porta Magna, was built around 1460 and was one of the first works of Venetian Renaissance architecture. It was based on the Roman Arch of the Sergii, a triumphal arch in Pula in Istria, now in Croatia but then Venetian territory. It was perhaps built by from a design by Jacopo Bellini. Two marble lions looted from Piraeus near Athens, situated beside it were added in 1687. One of the lions, known as the Piraeus Lion, has notable runic defacements that were probably carved into it by Scandinavian mercenaries in the 11th century.

In the late 16th century, the Arsenal's designers experimented with larger ships as platforms for heavy naval guns. The largest was the galleass, already used at the Battle of Lepanto (1571) against the Ottoman Turks, and developed from the old merchanting "great galley". It was huge, propelled by both sails and oars, with guns mounted on wheeled carriages along the sides in the modern fashion. It was slow and unwieldy in battle, however, and few were ever built. The galleon, also developed at the Arsenal, was an armed sailing ship, a slimmer version of the merchant "round ship". It was useful in major naval battles, but not in the small bays and off the extensive lee shores of the Dalmatian coast.

Significant parts of the Arsenal were destroyed under Napoleonic rule, and later rebuilt to enable the Arsenal's present use as a naval base. It is also used as a research center and an exhibition venue during the Venice Biennale, and is home to a historic boat preservation center.

File:Ponti, Carlo (ca. 1823-1893) - Venezia - Portale dell'Arsenale.jpg|Entrance to the Arsenal ca. 1860–70. Photo by Carlo Ponti

File:View of the entrance to the Arsenal by Canaletto, 1732.jpg|View of the Entrance to the Arsenal by Canaletto, 1732

File:Venice arsenale 2 1724.JPG|Venetian Arsenal, 1724 engraving by Joan Blaeu

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Mass production

The Venetian Arsenal's ability to mass-produce galleys on an almost assembly-line process was unique for its time and resulted in possibly the single largest industrial complex in Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution. So much so, that it was mentioned in Dante's Inferno:

The Arsenal's capacity for production was rare in a time when "most of Europe had no manufacturing abilities more efficient than the guild system, the slow and tradition-bound way craftsmen had of passing on skills to their sons or apprentices while monopolizing production and sale of craft pieces in a given region... The Arsenal was something different, a harbinger of future times."

The Venetian Arsenal was not the mass production facility that it was to become until about 1320 with the creation of the Arsenale Nuovo. The Arsenale Nuovo was simply a larger and more efficient version of the original. Prior to this time the Arsenal had served mainly as a place to maintain privately built ships. With the creation of the Arsenale Nuovo, and the development and introduction of the Great Galley, the Venetian Arsenal would start to take on its industrial form. The invention of the Great Galley itself is significant because they were able to be built frame-first. This process used less timber than the earlier hull-first building system, resulting in much faster build times. This was crucial to the process that would lead to the Arsenal becoming a mass-production center. By the 16th century, the Arsenal had become the most powerful and efficient shipbuilding enterprise in the world. Not only did it supply ships, rigging, and other nautical supplies, it was also a major munitions depot for the Venetian navy and was capable of outfitting and producing fully equipped merchant or naval vessels at the rate of one per day.

Venice's naval power

Venice's wealth and power rested in its ability to control trade in the Mediterranean. This would not have been possible without an extremely large navy and merchant force. By 1450, over 3,000 Venetian merchant ships were in operation, both as supply ships for Venetian merchants and as warships for the Venetian navy. The fleet required constant maintenance and outfitting. The Venetian Arsenal was not only able to function as a major shipyard, but was also responsible for these routine maintenance stops that most Venetian galleys required. This required financing, for which the Venetian government spent almost 10% of its revenues. This naval power resulted in the domination of Mediterranean commerce. Venice's leading families, largely merchants and noblemen, were responsible for creating some of the grandest palaces and employing some of the most famous artists ever known. This opulence and wealth would not have been possible without the naval force constructed by the Arsenal. With the creation of the Great Galley and the mass production capacity of the Arsenal, "the fleets of Venice were the basis for the greatest commercial power the European world had yet seen".

Current use

After years of disuse and neglect, parts of the Venetian Arsenal complex have been modernized and repurposed to serve as the operations centre for Venice's MOSE Project, a flood defence system intended to protect the Venetian Lagoon from tidal flooding.

Other arsenals

thumb|The [[Venetian arsenal, Gouvia|Venetian Arsenal at Govino Bay, Corfu]]

Venice built also a network of Venetian arsenals, serving primarily the purpose of repair, and naval stations in Greece, including shipyards in the Aegean Sea, Epirus, the Peloponnese and the Kingdom of Candia (modern Crete). Such locations included Corfu, Methoni, Koroni, Chalkis, Preveza, Chania and Heraklion.

References

External links

Arsenale di Venezia - Official webpage by the Municipality of Venice
thetis - What is the Arsenale
High-resolution 360° Panoramas of Arsenale | Art Atlas