With the fall of the Roman Empire, (476 A.C.), the lands of the Venetia and Istria, in the N-E of Italy, were invaded by different Germanic tribes, who partially settled there, like the Goths and Longobards who took the place of the local ancient Latin nobility, but were soon culturally assimilated by the local Latin culture.
In these years of wars and invasions, the planes and main valleys become less and less safe and were abandoned by people that found shelter in the main towns, soon surrounded by defensive walls and the first castles (from the Latin word “castra”) and above all, on the top of the hills, as it happened for the whole following Middle Age.
So, the complex hydro-graphic and agricultural system of the planes built in the Roman centuries, was abandoned and fell in ruin.
The Germanic invaders were mainly warriors and respected the peasants who provided them food and taxes, but had no scruples with the indigenous nobles and land owners, because these subtracted the control of lands and relative rents.
Just for this, the Venetian lords of Padua, Altino, Oderzo, Aquileia (then, one of the main towns of Italy) and other towns of the plane, used for centuries to live along rivers and lagoons, choose to transfer on the most lonely islands of the great Venetian Lagoon, already inhabited only by fishermen.
They rebuilt their towns on dense forests of wood stakes stick into the muddy soil, like made already many thousands years before, in the Paleolithic, to build the pile-dwellings along all lakes.
Here in the lagoon, all the main families from Padua and the other towns, found a new safer shelter with all their workers and servants, mainly after Padua destruction (601 A.C.).
A group of densely inhabited islands was the first nucleus of the actual Venice.
Its people worked hard in their usual trade activities on the sea and under the protection of the still powerful Byzantine Empire and they gave themselves a new political organization, electing, (697 A.C.)their first DOGE, a representant of the Venetian Lagoon islands federation from Caorle in the North to Chioggia in the South, not far from the mouth of Adige and Padus Rivers.
They defended themselves with success against the Germans, totally ruling the inland and, in the VIII-IX centuries they also become more autonomous from the Byzantine Empire.
Around the year 1000, Venice started its expansion along the Adriatic Sea and, in 1004, Venice defeated the Illiric pirates of Dalmatia, starting to create its first territories over there.
Then, Venetian military and commercial fleet started to be more and more present in the Mediterranean Sea, defeating also the dangerous Arabian pirates and the concurrence of the Byzantine Empire (slowly declining), to defend its trade.
So, Venice become the commercial and cultural “door” of Europe towards the Middle East and the whole Asia, reaching, already in the XI and XII centuries, an extreme and stable richness and splendor by getting many import monopoles of Asian goods.
The Republic of Venice was the first town and State of Europe to have a complex, precise and advanced laws corpus on every field, while all the rest of Europe was ruled only by the feudal law of the strongest.
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