Venipedia is currently under reconstruction. The site will be restored to over 4,000 pages by December 15th, 2012. Please continue to check back for updates!
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Welcome to Venipedia
A free, data-driven resource all about Venice, Italy.
Venipedia is a wiki-based website dedicated to the study of the city of Venice, Italy. It is intended as a repository for unique information and data primarily collected by the Venice Project Center at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. With decades of projects dedicated to the study of Venetian architecture, art, bridges, canals, churches, ecosystems, infrastructure, tourism, transportation, and more, we are now releasing our data to the world through this site.
There are already many Venetian resources on the internet, including both the English and Italian Wikipedias and various Italian-language sites. While these resources are adequate for some purposes, there are also some problems associated with these sources. For example, Wikipedia is a general-knowledge encyclopedia that provides neither detailed information nor concrete data.
This website aims to fill the gap of of an English-language, data-driven website about Venice. Please check back regularly for updates.
Coats of Arms, also known as stemmi (stemma, singular) in Italian, were formerly used to indicate ownership of a building. They are also a sub-set of material culture. The wealthier families in the city would often recreate their family crest out of stone, marble, or some other substance, and hang it outside of their palaces. Most coats of arms are symbolic of the family name in some way. In the event that a new owner moved into the building, the coat of arms would often be removed or carved off.
A blank stemma, the previous family's symbols having been removed when new owners took possession of the propertyA Dolfin family "talking" stemma, featuring three dolphins.
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