The Venice State Archives is celebrating an extraordinary rediscovery: a parchment dated February 12, 1350, documenting an intricate court case related to the commercial adventures of 14th-century Venetian merchants. This document, forgotten for decades in an envelope at the Frari Archives, has returned to light thanks to a painstaking restoration funded by the British University of Warwick.

Warwick Venice Centre, 29-30 November 2024

 The Traveller’s Tale workshop brought together 15 researchers based in the UK and Italy to discuss future directions in the study of travel and travel writing. It opened with reflections by some of the leading experts in the field on the forthcoming special issue in Studies in Travel Writing edited by Natalya Din-Kariuki (English) and Guido van Meersbergen (History), followed over the next two days by presentations showcasing Warwick postgraduate research conducted in part under the new Wheeler History of Travel Writing Programme, an interactive travel and maps session, and a roundtable discussion of an AHRC funding bid involving partners at Surrey, Oxford, and Warwick.

2024 marks the 700^th anniversary of the death of Marco Polo, the great Venetian traveller and merchant who crossed Asia to spend time in China, before returning to Venice to write about his travels and in turn helping initiate a new golden age of exploration, trade and connection between East and West. This year we at Warwick have been celebrating this anniversary through our Marco Polo International Programme – a series of academic conferences, educational exchanges and community events on campus, at our Warwick Venice Centre and with our global partners in China and elsewhere – to underline the power, importance and impact of cultural exchange and engagement, in the past and the present (check out www.warwick.ac.uk/mpip for more details).

On the evening of the 11^th of November 2024 the British Ambassador to Italy and the Republic of San Marino, Edward Llewellyn, visited the Warwick Venice Centre at Palazzo Giustianian Lolin. The event was co-organized by the Circolo Italo-Britannico of Venice and the Warwick Venice Centre, and it attracted an audience of more than 60 people, including several Warwick history and history/politics students.

On 17^th October, Warwick Venice Centre hosted a lecture by WVC Director, Prof Luca Mola and chaired by PVC-International, Prof Michael Scott, for an audience of Warwick History and History of Arts students undertaking their ‘Venice term’; members of the Venetian community and patrons of the charity Venice in Peril.

The University of Warwick, in collaboration with Nova University in Lisbon, University of Ljubljana, University of Arts in Belgrade, Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, Kazakh National Academy of Arts in Almaty, and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, invited postgraduate students and early career researchers to an autumn school focused on the theme of Marco Polo and the Silk Roads.