The lure of shopping: the Mercerie in early modern Venice and the city as a permanent mall

This essay will consider the Mercerie in Venice as an identity marker in early modern Venice, helping shape its perception as a luxurious city and a powerful commercial marketplace even in a challenging period for Venetian economy in late 17th and 18th centuries. The Mercerie (the street of mercers) still identifies an urban route in Venice linking the Rialto area and St Mark’s. From its very beginning this route housed a dense network of shops and market stalls, where everything was sold. The concentration of shops around Rialto and along the urban route from Rialto to St Mark's had redefined itself between the 15th and 16th centuries as an ‘umbilicus’, according to Ennio Concina’s similitude, as the centre of a body, located in the geometric centre of a clearly configured mercantile space. It displayed as well the essence of Venice and its double heart – commercial at Rialto, and political in St Mark’s where the imposing Ducal Palace stood along the dogal basilica. No wonder the Mercerie entered into the official tour of the city given to princes and ambassadors, and were an obligatory route in civic processions. Albeit coexisting with several other crafts, it was mercers’ to mostly dominate trades in this area. Their retail network stood between international wholesale trade and production, their shops intended to amaze and impress foreigners. Their rich and often international clientele requested the luxury items characterizing Venetian production (laces and silk and gold cloths), but shops themselves increasingly received their customers’ requests with more fashionable designs, especially along the 18th century, thus contributing to direct local production and the identity of Venice itself. Making use of contemporary guides, archival sources, and the existing bibliography, the case study of Venetian Mercerie will permit to stress the importance of an urban route in shaping the identity of an early modern economy and society.