Wandering through Venice, you often feel the weight of its past pressing through the narrow alleyways and onto the lapping canals.
But what about the histories that aren’t there?
The faces that have been scratched from paintings, the names scrubbed from records?
The city, as much as it is a monument to grandeur, is also a master of forgetting.
Venice had a way of dealing with those who betrayed it.
The most infamous example is Marino Faliero, the Doge who attempted a coup against the ruling elite in 1355.
His rebellion failed, and he was executed—but here is the thing.
Not just physically, but historically.
His name was struck from official documents, his achievements erased, and his portrait in the Doge’s Palace was painted over with a black void.
Where his face should have been, there was only absence.
“Here is the place of Marino Faliero, beheaded for his crimes.”
But here’s the irony: the erasure itself became a presence.
A blank space in a gallery of rulers is louder than a portrait.
It speaks of something missing, something suppressed, something that once was.
Venice understood that controlling history meant controlling memory.
And what was remembered—or forgotten—was often a matter of power.
The Modern Damnatio Memoriae
This isn’t just a relic of the Renaissance.
The ability to erase, to dictate what remains in the collective consciousness, is alive and well.
In fact, one of the most striking modern examples of Damnatio Memoriae comes not from a medieval city-state but from New Zealand in 2019.
After the Christchurch mosque attacks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a crucial decision: she refused to say the terrorist’s name.
“He will not be remembered,” she declared, setting a precedent for how the media and society would handle his legacy.
“And to others, I implore you: speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them. He may have sought notoriety but we, in New Zealand, will give nothing – not even his name.” – Guardian Tue 19 Mar 2019
His name was minimized in reporting. His manifesto and livestream were swiftly removed from the internet.
Unlike past mass murderers who had been elevated to infamy, he was sentenced to a different kind of punishment: oblivion.
This was a striking contrast to the usual cycle of media coverage, where names of perpetrators echo long after their crimes.
Ardern’s approach was deliberate: to deny him the notoriety he sought, to refuse to let his ideology take root in public consciousness.
It was a modern act of erasure—not rewriting history, but refusing to give it a place in history at all.
Can We Ever Truly Forget?
But here’s the paradox: erasure is never complete.
Just as Venice could not entirely erase Marino Faliero—the missing portrait itself becoming a haunting reminder—New Zealand’s attempt to erase the Christchurch shooter did not eliminate him from history.
His name may not be widely spoken, but the decision to silence it is remembered.
The instinct to forget is as strong as the instinct to remember.
In an age of digital permanence, where the internet rarely forgets, we may think we have outgrown the ancient practice of Damnatio Memoriae.
But in truth, we’ve only found new ways to wield it.
The real question is not whether history can be erased, but who gets to decide what is forgotten?
And perhaps more unsettlingly: what, despite our best efforts, will refuse to be erased?
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