The entrance to the Arsenale, the first and one of the most powerful shipyards in history, where Venice’s military secrets were kept as jealously as those of any nuclear armoury is today. Its walls are still intact going two miles round, within which up to 16,000 people were in its employ, an indication of the city’s power and efficency; it was here, long before Ford in America, that the modern production chain was put into practice, if we consider that during the wars against the Turks in the 16th century, a new galley left these yards everyday for 100 days. The workers of the Arsenale were called Arsenalotti, and their knowledge of Venice’s military secrets was valued so highly that they alone were exempted from kneeling before the doge. However prestigious this may seem, the work rate, conditions and heat were so tough here that Dante Alighieri even compared the Arsenale to where gamblers would burn in the Inferno of his Divine Comedy, as you can read from a plaque in his honour on the wall. The gate of the Arsenale is guarded by a row of white marble lions, but look closer to the tall one on the left. It came here from Athens around 400 years ago, where it guarded the port of the ancient Greek city. On one of its sides are scribblings which are certainly not Greek and had seemed illegible, until a Norwegian scholar on holiday recognised them as Nordic runes engraved by a group of viking soldiers in the 11th century. Think then that Arsenale itself comes from the Arabic for “workplace”, and we have here the epiytomy of the vast mix peoples and cultures that made Venice such a unique place in history.
