On the Magistrates and Republic of Venice

existed that was founded in a site so opportune, so safe, and, finally, so remote from the common belief of men. Most people, when founding a city, have thought they had done enough if they had chosen a place to which approach was difficult and inconvenient for enemies to invade and besiege the city. Hence it happens that many cities have been founded either in the crags of mountains, with a rough and difficult approach, or in marshy places. By a certain different rationale, some have judged that nothing should be preferred to a convenient and opportune site for importing and exporting all things, without which a city cannot be self-sufficient, both for necessity and for a certain softer luxury of life. But those who have studied both things you will find very few, and fewer still who have achieved it, and none, so far as I know, who have attained it in every respect. But the site of Venice, by some divine counsel rather than human industry—beyond the belief of all those who have not seen that city—is most safe from every assault by land and sea, and is also the most suitable of all for the abundance of every thing