“Venice and the Ottoman Empire” with Alessandro Barbero

“Freedom of Thought in Renaissance Venice”
with Edward Muir Jr.

In talks that explore La Serenissima’s social, cultural, and political history, bestselling Italian historian and novelist Alessandro Barbero views Venice’s relationship with the Ottoman Empire through the lens of the epic Battle of Lepanto in 1571, while Edward Muir Jr. examines the remarkably free exchange of ideas that flourished in Venice—some of them incendiary.

Alessandro Barbero is an Italian historian, novelist and essayist. Professor at the Universita’ del Piemonte Orientale, in addition to publishing numerous essays (among them, translated in English, The Battle: A New History of Waterloo, Charlemagne: Father of a Continent as well as a two-volume history of the battle of Lepanto) he has written historical fiction. In 1996, with the novel Bella vita e guerre altrui di Mr. Pyle, gentiluomo, he won the Strega Prize, Italy's most distinguished literary award. His most recent study is a volume on the emperor Constantine.

Edward Muir is Professor of History at Northwestern University. He has been a fellow at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti and has written extensively on Italian social and cultural history with a special focus on the Renaissance period: among his publications, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, which won the Adams and Marraro Prizes; Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta in Renaissance Italy, which also won the Marraro Prize; Ritual in Early Modern Europe; and The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines, and Opera.

The event is part of the Festival La Serenissima: Music and Arts from the Venetian Republic, organized by Carnegie Hall.