"Rabbioso"

Every New Year, Vienna's Golden Hall in Austria hosted a New Year's concert, a grand event where celebrities from around the world gathered. Anyone invited considered it a great honor—except Venetians.

The Golden Hall had been begun by T. von Hansen in 1867 and completed in 1869. It was an Italian Renaissance-style building. Its outer walls alternated yellow and red, and many statues of music goddesses stood atop its roof. It was antique, distinctive, and magnificently lavish. But how could such a luxurious concert hall possibly have been built in two years?

Those statues and paintings had all been handmade. During Napoleon's eleven-year occupation of Venice, he had taken away every work of art that could be removed. By the time it was the Austrians' turn, there was little left to plunder.

Under the pretext of building a railway station, they demolished a palace and an assembly hall. Not a bit of building material was wasted; it was all shipped to Austria. When Venice and Veneto were finally able to choose their own fate in 1866, they chose to join the newly established Kingdom of Italy. The Austrians began construction in 1867, and two years later, this music hall full of "Italian Renaissance style" had appeared.

If the French had retained at least a little civilized decorum, then the Austrians had come purely to enjoy "happy times." They invented a cocktail made from sparkling wine called Prosecco and witch liqueur, drinking themselves senseless in broad daylight until they could no longer find their way back to the barracks through Venice's maze-like streets. Later, they invented a system for numbering the streets.

For ease of transport, they dredged and expanded another Grand Canal, deepened the lagoon entrance to allow ships through, and used Venetian labor for all of it.

Destroying their