Our book today is Venice: Birth of a City, a marvelous illustrated 1987 gem by the great Piero Ventura, whose picture books just brim with life and idiosyncratic charm. He opens his account of the earliest history of Venice with the customary hymn of praise and some basic geographic outlining:

Venice is the strangest, most fascinating and perhaps the most beautiful city in the world. It is built on an archipelago of over 110 low islets in the Lagoon of Venice. The islets are protected from the open sea, the Adriatic, by the Lido, a sandbar over 6 miles long.

Ventura starts off the old familiar story with terrified refugees seeking some kind of haven, even if they had to built one from scratch on open water:

So why was this city ever built on swampy islands in the middle of a desolate lagoon? The first Venetians were fishermen, hunters and boatmen who were skilled enough at navigating the maze of muddy banks and shallows to make a living. The real history of the city began in the fifth century. Frightened coastal dwellers fleeing barbarian hordes who poured into Italy after the downfall of the Roan Empire settled on these offshore islands. These refugees had lived in fine Roman cities. Here on the islands they started a new life, for the most part undisturbed by the Lombard invaders on the mainland. They drew close together and on the Rivo Alto (Rialto), a central lagoon township, Venice grew up.

On page after bright, inviting page (including a wonderful four-page fold-out to climax the whole tale), Ventura shows Venice during the successive intervals of her growth, from shabby wooden hovels to slightly less-shabby buildings of wood and primitive stone, to something approaching the elaborately solid and crowded city we know today, and all along the way, he fills his pictures with delightful details: children chasing each other, dogs and cats darting along streets, women gathered around fountains, and, in my favorite single shot, the city of Venice blanketed under a fresh snowfall.

He also gives us the city’s people – the artisans and craftsmen who not only made Venice habitable but made her clothes and jewels and glassware prized from London to the Ottoman Empire (we likewise see inside the intrepid sailing vessels that brought both craftworks and businessmen to all the ports of the known world). It’s an amazing feat: in just twenty pages, he manages to give as clear and comprehensive an account of the history of Venice as most other books (some of which we’ll see in future chapters!) can only barely manage in 200 pages – or more.

The format of Venice: Birth of a City automatically suggests it as a kids book, but like all the best kids books, it’s not age-restrictive in any way. Instead, it recounts a wonder in merrily transparent terms.