Venice and Epidemics

Venice has its own history of dealing with epidemics. It was one of the first places in Europe to develop a health policy to deal with the outbreak of the plague. There is no doubt that the experience of the Serenissima remains extremely significant in the history of healthcare and epidemic emergencies. Venice was at the forefront of crisis management, as seen during the plagues of 1576 and 1630, and was very effective after 1630, both in implementing prophylactic strategies and in implementing a genuine health defense policy, especially in regards to its maritime domains in the Mediterranean, which bordered the Ottoman Empire, an area where the plague was endemic, a hotbed that was more frightening than war.

The conference Venice and Epidemics opens up reflection on what this specific history has been. Experts will discuss the significance of the Venetian experience, starting with epidemic crises and today’s pandemics, and then retracing the most difficult periods in Venetian history, the dramatic years, and grasp the organizational and cultural implications, as well as the relationship with death on a collective scale, taking into account the periodization and how all this was a world with its own connotations, a world that the cultural turning point in Europe between the 18th and 19th centuries, with the age of Napoleon, had changed.

programme

Friday, 17 October

10:00 – 13:00

• Daniele Franco (Scientific Director, Fondazione Giorgio Cini)

  Introduction

• Silvio Brusaferro (Università degli Studi di Udine)

  Imparando da Venezia

• Giuseppe Banfi (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele Milano)

  Epidemie e infodemie attraverso citazioni citabili

• Nelli-Elena Vanzan Marchini (Centro Italiano di Storia Sanitaria e Ospedaliera del Veneto)

  La politica sanitaria di Venezia

• Sabrina Minuzzi (Università degli Studi di Udine)

  La peste a Venezia: invenzioni letterarie e segreti medicinali

15:00 – 18:00

• Luigi Mascilli Migliorini (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma)

  La peste e l’Europa di Napoleone

• Gino Benzoni (Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Venezia)

  Venezia: morte e morie

• Ermanno Orlando (Università per Stranieri di Siena)

  La peste del 1348 a Venezia

• Gerolamo Fazzini (Archeoclub d’Italia Sede di Venezia ETS) and Francesca Malagnini (Università per Stranieri di Perugia)

  I Lazzaretti veneziani. Le scritture parietali

• Egidio Ivetic (Institute for Venetian History, Fondazione Giorgio Cini)

  Conclusions

Moderator: Marco Pellegrini (Università degli Studi di Bergamo)