Doge Dandolo

Description

Open Edition Reproduction

ENRICO DANDOLO, Doge of Venice, 1192 – 1205. Active in the military expansion of Venice and the mastermind of the sack od Constantinople by the fourth crusade in 1204, which resulted in the Partitio Romani dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire, which whilst establishing the pre-eminence of Venice, also laid the way for the later Mehmet 11 Ottoman conquest.

Died in Constantinople, aged 98, in 1205 and was buried in the Hagia Sofia. The site of his grave was lost after conversion of the Hagia into a mosque following the conquest. The Palazzo of the Doge is in the background, on the eastern aspect of the San Marco Piazza.