Archaeological Venice – A new journey along the routes of the Republic of Venice
🇮🇹 Leggi questo articolo in italiano
There are stories that do not end within the pages of books, but continue to live on in places, in stones, in languages, and in the memories of those who pass through them.
Starting today, in the “Archaeological Venice” section of Serenissima Venezia, we embark on a new editorial journey dedicated to Venetian Crete, one of the most fascinating and complex chapters of the Stato da Màr of the Republic of Venice. This will not be a simple series of articles, but a true ongoing narrative: a living, layered investigation that we will follow step by step.
Guiding us on this journey will be the work of Tiziana Cossignani, a philologist and scholar who has spent years conducting historical and anthropological research on the period of Venetian rule in Crete (Ενετοκρατία), with particular focus on ancient Candia and the system of arsenals, the beating heart of the Serenissima’s maritime power.
The project, developed together with video artist and anthropologist Francesco De Melis, unfolds across multiple levels: field research, study of sources, collection of testimonies, and the production of a documentary currently in the editing phase. In its later stages, this will be accompanied by audiovisual installations, exhibitions, and potential collaborations with local Cretan institutions.
What we will recount is not only the past. It is also an attempt to reconstruct a heritage of knowledge—both tangible and intangible—linked to Venetian seafaring: from the architecture of the arsenals to the skills of the arsenalotti, and the linguistic and cultural traces that are still visible today between Venice and Crete.
This editorial journey will take shape through multiple formats: articles, podcasts, and video content, with the aim of offering a complete narrative—accessible yet rigorous—capable of conveying the full complexity of a historical legacy that still concerns us.
We will follow this project as one follows a route: with care, curiosity, and respect for sources, aware that each stage may open new questions.
Welcome aboard.
— Antonio Vaianella
Now, we give the floor to Tiziana.
Venetian Crete: at the origins of a journey
It was probably “love at first sight”, but something about Crete particularly attracted me right from that first visit in 2009. Since then, I’ve returned on several occasions for all sorts of reasons: the latest adventure—still “a work in progress”—began about three years ago.
It all started from my wish to conduct philological and historical-anthropological research on the Venetian period (Ενετοκρατία) in ancient Candia, the longest domination of the “Stato da Màr” (‘Domains of the Sea’) by La Serenissima (1212–1669)— an investigation that led me to a more in-depth study of the Venetian arsenals (Τα Νεώρια) located in Chania (Χανιά), the second most important city in Crete after the capital, Heraklion (Ηράκλειο).
Evidence of Venetian influence in Crete and other colonies of the Most Serene Republic is evident not only in architecture and language, but also in the transmission of nautical and various other forms of knowledge—as part of the cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, linked to Venice.
In collaboration with Francesco De Melis, a video artist and anthropologist, we proposed to CAM (Center for Mediterranean Architecture) at the Great Arsenal (Μεγάλο Αρσενάλι) in Chania and to the director of the Chania Film Festival the production and presentation of a documentary film—currently in the editing phase—on the ancient Duchy of Candia, with a particular focus on the maritime world. Given this context, at the final stage of the project, it might also be of interest to set up an engaging and original exhibition on site about “Arsenalotti” (the Venetian shipwrights, who have preserved and transmitted nautical knowledge), as conceived and already organized in Venice by the Kokonton Association and the CSA: from 1960 to 2015, the most significant moments in shipbuilding, as captured by the shipyard workers themselves, bearing witness to a vast legacy of techniques and expertise in vessel construction and maintenance. In building a new bridge between Venice and Crete, it seems both timely and fascinating to engage with the Arsenalotti themselves in order to gather further insights into sea-faring practices and their world, which, unfortunately, has long since been lost, along with other maritime civilizations, yet is undoubtedly preserved in historical memory and the oral traditions of those who embody the identity of all the seas—above all, our beloved Adriatic.
It would also be worthwhile to simultaneously hold an exhibition of archive photos of local shipwrights (μαραγκοί, from the Venetian “marangon”, meaning, in fact, marine carpenter): those who were still active until the first decade of this century worked on an accurate and documented reconstruction of a Minoan ship model, which is still on display at the Museum of Ancient Shipbuilding, also located in a former arsenal (Moro shipyard) in the Venetian port of Chania.
Among the topics discussed during the meetings with the Councilor for Culture was exploring the feasibility of designing and creating an audiovisual installation on the theme of our documentary film within the fascinating spaces of the Old Port: from the Great Arsenal to the 17th-century Venetian church of San Rocco. In view of the renovation of a group of seven adjoining arsenals, with the aim of converting them into exhibition spaces (at the end of the 15th century there were twenty-three; today, a total of nine remain), the possibility of hosting our audiovisual work as a permanent exhibition was also discussed. In this regard, we are exploring the possibility of a co-production with Cretan institutions and with local and national organizations.
I’ve been in Crete for over two and a half years now, and even in this new creative and productive perspective, I still wonder what really drove me to plunge into all of this: I often embrace the romantic idea of the call of my distant Venetian ancestors…I wonder if this might be a case of Jungian synchronicity, but regardless of any interpretation, the magical and undeniable charm of this island continues to represent, for me, an ideal return to my roots.
—Tiziana Cossignani
The author
Tiziana Cossignani is a language teacher, translator, and philologist originally from the Marche region, Italy. After earning her master’s degree in Language studies (Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures) in Bologna, she has lived abroad for several years in various countries, including beautiful Crete. She has extensive experience traveling outside Italy, dating back to her childhood, and her curiosity and passion for different cultures, histories, and languages have always been a part of her ever since. Over the past decade, she has been involved in various projects as a translator and editor of anthropological texts for exhibitions and museums, as well as a performance artist—combining acting and singing—in virtual reality experiments.
This journey continues in the next episode, where we will explore further aspects of the Venetian presence in Crete.
Between Venice and Crete, the route goes on.
Stay with us.
© Tiziana Cossignani – All rights reserved (text and photographs)
