ABSTRACT
Venice. The name alone evokes a sensuous environment and the promise of unique sensory encounters for visitors and armchair travelers alike. Sixteenth-century Venice was a large, bustling, noisy and often malodorous city; from the “bells which are heard all over the city and also many miles away,” 1 to the smells—“filthy, foggy, ill-savouring and unwholesome airs” 2 —the sensuous environment of Venice took increasing hold of the European imagination. It was a center of international trade, printing and the arts, including the performing arts. Discussions of the “things of the world” went on in public, private and the in-between space of the street. It was a city-state with carefully defined social strata, with a keen awareness that foreigners made up a large part of the population. Who could see, hear and touch, as well as how one could be seen, heard and touched, for example, were under constant negotiation as the state tried to regulate its sensory environment to bring it into line with the image it projected of serene order and stability. Venice is an excellent place to start investigating the confluence of sensory attitudes and practices, urban space and the making of publics.
