On the quiet Fondamenta dei Furlani, a canalside walkway, you’ll find a place that seems untouched by time: the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice’s confraternity of Dalmatians. Its story began on 24 March 1451, when two hundred ‘Schiavoni’ — merchants, sailors and workers from the other side of the Adriatic — gathered in a room at the Ospedale di Santa Caterina to found the confraternity.