For a thousand years Venice was a republic, and one of the most durable political constructions in European history. This second part looks at what that produced. Along the Grand Canal, the façades trace the succession of styles — Byzantine arcades, Venetian Gothic tracery, Renaissance orders, Baroque mass — each generation of merchant families building to be seen from the water. At the political centre stand the Basilica of St Mark, encrusted with mosaics and with marble brought back from the East, and the Doge's Palace, seat of a government of councils and elections without equal at the time. The Arsenal built the fleet that carried the republic's trade and its wars. Museums, scuole and churches hold the paintings of the Venetian school, from Bellini to Tintoretto and Tiepolo. Filmed in 4K, the programme reads the city as the physical archive of a state that governed the sea.
