Venice - The Insatiable (19/39)

Venice - The Insatiable (19/39)

Venice - a romantic, melancholy city, this we know. But insatiable? And yet this latter characteristic defines Venice more aptly than anything else. For it was in this spirit that Venice emerged. In the spirit of merchants dedicated to exploring any way of buying the best goods at the best price, who undertook arduous and perilous journeys so that they could offer for sale the most exquisite, precious objects and who risked everything for the chance of amassing even more gold. Only against this background is it possible to understand why the lagoon city was able to develop into the trading city of the Mediterranean and how it became a cosmopolitan city whose wealth was the envy of princes throughout the world.

Venedig, die Romantische, die Melancholische, das kennt man - aber die Unersättliche? Und doch charakterisiert letzteres Venedig treffender als alles andere. Denn Venedig entstand aus genau jenem Geist. Dem Geist von Kaufleuten, die spitzfindig nach jeder Möglichkeit suchten, um die besseren und günstigeren Waren einkaufen zu können, die beschwerliche und gefährliche Reisen auf sich nahmen, um noch seltenere Kostbarkeiten feilbieten zu können und die alles daran setzten, um noch mehr Gold zusammenzuraffen. Nur so läßt sich verstehen, warum die Lagunenstadt zu der Handelsmacht im Mittelmeer aufsteigen konnte und zu einer Weltstadt wurde, deren Reichtümer Fürsten erblassen ließ.

This series portrays landscapes, metropoles, sacred sites and monuments, all of which have made a unique contribution to the cultural heritage of mankind. Each episode breathes life into civilizations which thrived in the past ten thousand years, some of them then vanishing without a trace into the shadows of history. The films describe epochs whose legacy lingers in the perceptions and ideas of our own age, and cult sites which have managed to preserve their religious and cultural power up to the present day.