François-René de Chateaubriand, one of the great European intellectuals of the nineteenth century, came to Venice three times, leaving traces of his visits in the "Memoirs from Beyond the Grave."

These writings later went on to form a "Livre sur Venise" published in France but never in Italy. These are illuminating pages that tell the story of Venetian society in the difficult and yet foundational years of the early Habsburg period.

Historian and art critic Gian Domenico Romanelli takes us through the pages of Chateaubriand, introducing us to the great protagonists who frequented Venice and its palaces in those years, from Antonio Canova to Leopoldo Cicognara, from Silvio Pellico to Ugo Foscolo, from Lord Byron to George Sand. What emerges is a previously unpublished and fascinating fresco that sheds new and unexpected light on a still little-known and little-studied period in Venetian history, before the Romantic myth of 'love and death' descended permanently on the city.

In the appendix, the text of the Livre sur Venise is presented in full and translated form for the first time.