Venice, preferring peace to total war both against the Turks and by sea, has surrendered the bases of Lepanto, Modon and Coron.

Despite setbacks in the struggle against the Turks, Venice, with one hundred and eighty thousand inhabitants at the end of fifteenth century, is the second largest city in Europe after Paris and probably the richest in the world.

The territory of the Republic of Venice extends over approximately seventy thousand square kilometers (twenty-seven thousand square miles) with 2.1 million inhabitants (for a comparative example in the same time England hosts three million, the whole of Italy eleven, France thirteen, Portugal 1.7, Spain six, Germany/Holy Roman Empire ten.

Venetian-born Jacopo de'Barbari, active here as a painter and engraver in the late 1490s, is believed to be the designer of the large, topographical woodcut “View of Venice,” executed from 1498 to 1500.