What happened on March 13 in Venice

According to the Venetian Liturgical Calendar, today is St Macedonius Martyr’s Day

- March 13, 1229: 17 days after his abdication, after having held the highest office of the Republic for a quarter of a century, Doge Pietro Ziani dies in his house in St Giustina, and is buried next to his father in the church of San Giorgio Maggiore; he is famous for having proposed to transfer the Doge’s seat to Constantinople.

- March 13, 1500: Lorenzo Gusnasco from Pavia writes to Isabella d'Este that he has seen her portrait made by Leonardo da Vinci, who was in Venice. The polymath stayed in the city for about a month, he had been invited by the Serenissima, to study the defenses to be built in Friuli against the Turks at Gradisca on the River Isonzo. During his stay Leonardo saw Luca Pacioli, the well-known mathematician religious. One of his best-known works, the Vitruvian Man, is now preserved in the Gallarie dell'Accademia, together with other Leonardo drawings.

- March 13, 1848: Adriano Balbi dies in Venice, one of the first divulger of modern geographic science in Italy, who at the age of 26 published a "Physical-political design of the state of the globe", and later an "Ethnographic Atlas", where six thousand languages and dialects are classified, a work that earned him universal fame and praise from the most famous geographers of the time.

Taken from 'Almanacco di Venezia -1600 anni ab Urbe còndita' by Andrea Gersich and Edoardo Rubini

Venice, 13th March 2021