Spaces of unrest? Policing hospitality sites in early modern Venice 1

Abstract

Venice by the late Middle Ages had developed an extensive infrastructure of hospitality catering both to the numerous migrants and visitors to the city as well as to local residents. Sites offering food, drink, and accommodation were regarded as essential to the well-being of the community, the economy, and thus to the maintenance of order. Nonetheless, the sixteenth century was marked by government efforts to bring them under closer surveillance: to restrict who was allowed to run them, where they were located and who, when and what they were permitted to serve. Venice’s authorities showed persistent concern about the incidence of a variety of disorderly activities in these spaces, ranging from blasphemy to illicit sex, dancing to gambling, brawls and assaults to more overt, collective forms of political subversion. This chapter examines the role of these sites of hospitality in the social and political lives of Venetian inhabitants and visitors, and in maintaining, or disrupting, the delicate social and political equilibrium of the lagoon city. It argues that the provision of hospitality to both foreigners and locals, in early modern Venice as elsewhere, was a political and economic issue of the utmost importance, and one that deserves to be much better understood.