The Venetian Governor’s Palace on Ithaca

ABSTRACT The ruins of Venetian-period settlements on Ithaca have been overshadowed by interest in the ancient heritage of the island, particularly by the obsession to locate the palace of Odysseus. Despite the neglect of the early modern built heritage of Ithaca, its study sheds light on the economic and social forces that shaped the spatial and urban experience of Venetian rule. This article surveys a large series of unpublished documentary evidence for the evolution of an important example of Venetian-period public architecture on Ithaca, the “palace” built to serve the island’s governors. The public edifice in the island’s main township built sometime in the late sixteenth century decayed over the course of the seventeenth century and into the next, when it was abandoned by the governors, who took to residing on the bayside in a settlement expanding with the growth of trade. This article emphasizes the structural, political causes of the demise of the palace and places these in their colonial administrative context. It emphasizes the role of the palace as a material representation of the presence of colonial power on a small island at the periphery, which was ruled as a delegated jurisdiction by local elites and not directly by Venetians.