Ghost Empire

by Richard Fidler

History also offers us a defence against the sickly sweet temptations of nostalgia, the conviction that in times past things were simpler, people nobler and children more obedient.

He saw how an emperor’s authority could be magnified several times over by having a plausible claim to a divine mandate. Who would, after all, want to defy the gods?

The question was, how would he transform the philosophy of a man who preached poverty, forgiveness and non-violence into an ideology of power?

Once you know this of Venice, you can never see St Mark’s in quite the same way. It looks less like a work of holy inspiration and more like a magpie’s nest of plunder, a monument to a shameless act of theft.