A walk with 83 stops, from St Mark's Square to Palazzo Mocenigo Gambara.
The stops
- St Mark's Square
It is the only space in Venice called ’Piazza’ - all the others are campi (Venetian squares) - because it wanted to be unique even in name.
- Portico of the Napoleonic Wing (Ala Nuovissima)
The short side of St Mark’s Square, opposite the Basilica, is closed off by the Ala Nuovissima, known as the Napoleonic Wing.
- The vanished church of San Geminiano
Turn your back on the Basilica and look at the short side of the Square: the Napoleonic Wing today closes the space where for two and a half centuries stood San Geminiano, the church Jacopo Sansovino completed in 1557 and loved so much that he chose it as his tomb.
- Frezzeria
Narrow and always crowded, the Frezzeria draws an L between the Fenice and St Mark’s Square: until 1863, before the Bacino Orseolo offered a more direct route, it was the quickest link between Campo San Luca and the Piazza.
- Campo San Fantin
Halfway between San Marco, the Rialto and the Accademia, Campo San Fantin is the theatrical heart of Venice: here the late-Renaissance church - which for centuries was also dedicated to Santa Maria delle Grazie - faces the colonnade of the Teatro La Fenice, and the pairing is no accident: for centuries people left this campo (Venetian square) in costume heading for the theatre and came back late at night.
- The Church of San Fantino
Campo San Fantin is one of the densest fulcrums of history in the city: on one side the neoclassical façade of the Teatro La Fenice, the temple of opera inaugurated in 1792 and twice risen from its own ashes; on the other the church of San Fantino, a thousand years old, rebuilt in the 16th century with ten thousand ducats left by Cardinal Zeno — and it was the Senate that saw to executing his will.
- Calle della Fenice
Calle della Fenice, a Venetian street, runs behind the Gran Teatro La Fenice opera house, between the sottoportico of the Malvasia Vecchia (a covered passageway) at San Fantin and the Ponte di San Cristoforo, on the edge of the rio delle Veste (a Venetian canal).
- Campiello Mario Marinoni
Behind the north side of the La Fenice opera house, a tiny paved square opens between Campo San Fantin and the rio della Verona (a Venetian canal).
- Fondamenta, Ponte and Sottoportico San Cristoforo
Behind the Teatro La Fenice the rio della Verona curves narrowly between the walls, and here three pieces of the Venetian vocabulary line up: the fondamenta, the bridge and the sottoportego of San Cristoforo — the giant who carried the Child across the river and became the saint of wayfarers, natural patron of those who cross the water.
- Ponte dei Calegheri
- Ramo e Campiello dei Calegheri
A bridge of a few steps, a turn, and the din around La Fenice is left behind: the Campiello dei Calegheri (a campiello is a small square) is one of those hidden courtyards where Venice seems to stand still.
- La Fenice opera house
On Campo San Fantin (a campo is a Venetian square), sober among the houses, opens the Neoclassical façade of Venice’s most famous opera house: La Fenice, born in 1792 from a design by Giannantonio Selva for a society of box-holders that had lost its theatre — and chose the name of the bird that is reborn from its own ashes.
- Calle del Piovan o Gritti
This short, silent calle links the Fondamenta della Fenice to the Campo of Santa Maria Zobenigo: two minutes’ walk in the district behind the theatre.
- Campo Santa Maria del Giglio and its Church
At the end of Calle Larga XXII Marzo, a Venetian street, the Campo di Santa Maria del Giglio opens up. In Venetian it is called Zobenigo, after the Iubanico family who founded it in the 10th century.
- Palazzo Malipiero (della Feltrina)
Behind the church of Santa Maria del Giglio opens a tiny campiello, one of those secret shelters that Venice gives to those who leave the beaten paths.
- Palazzo Corner della Ca' Grande
On the right bank of the Grand Canal, between the Casina delle Rose and the rio di San Maurizio (a small canal), Palazzo Corner della Ca’ Grande interrupts the rhythm of the Gothic houses with a mass of Roman stone: rusticated stonework on the ground floor, Ionic and Corinthian orders on the piani nobili, wide terrace-loggias where voids prevail over solids.
- Palazzo Zaguri
Closing Campo San Maurizio to the east stands one of the finest private Gothic buildings in Venice: Palazzo Zaguri, born as Palazzo Pasqualini between the late fourteenth and the fifteenth century, at the wish of a family of rich silk merchants come from Milan.
- Campo San Maurizio
A broad campo (square) with an aristocratic air, just a short walk from Santo Stefano yet away from the tourist crowds.
- La Scuola degli Albanesi
On Calle del Piovan, a few steps from Campo San Maurizio, a sculpted facade tells the story of a people in flight: this was the Scuola di Santa Maria e San Gallo degli Albanesi, the confraternity of the Albanians of Venice — a ’scuola’ (confraternity), because it was not just a place of worship but of meeting, study and mutual aid. The Albanians — barbers, bakers and sailors driven here by the Ottoman advance in the Balkans — obtained it with difficulty in the mid-15th century; the facade you see dates from 1531, with the Madonna between St Gall and St Maurice and, above, an image unique in the city: the sultan Mehmed II besieging the castle of Scutari — the fortress that resisted him in 1474 and that the Venetians ceded to him by treaty only in 1479, when the Turks planted the crescent moon on it. And of the community, faithful to the Republic that had welcomed it, place names remain too: more than one calle degli Albanesi in the city preserves the name of its inhabitants.
- Campo Santo Stefano and the Tommaseo Monument
Campo Santo Stefano — which the street signs call Campo Francesco Morosini — is one of the largest campi (squares) in Venice: a long L-shaped square that runs from the Gothic flank of the church of Santo Stefano to San Vidal and the Accademia Bridge.
- Campo San Vitale
Campo San Vitale — which Venetians more often call Campo San Vidal — is a small passing-through square in the sestiere (district) of San Marco, wedged between the vastness of Campo Santo Stefano and the head of the Accademia Bridge.
- The Accademia Bridge
The Accademia Bridge is one of the four bridges over the Grand Canal and perhaps Venice’s most famous belvedere: from its summit the gaze runs on one side as far as the Bacino di San Marco and the mass of the Salute, on the other to the ’volta de Canal’.
- The Carità Complex and the Gallerie dell'Accademia
Between the Accademia Bridge and the bank of the Grand Canal stretches the Carita complex: church, convent and seat of the oldest of the six Scuole Grandi (the great lay confraternities of Venice).
- Rio Terrà della Carità
This broad, straight street seems out of place in Dorsoduro’s maze of narrow lanes.
- Ponte di San Trovaso
At the centre of the rio di San Trovaso — the canal that cuts through Dorsoduro in an almost straight line from the Giudecca to the Grand Canal — this stone and brick bridge still bears the date of its birth: MDXXXII, 1532, carved on the arch ring beside a moeca lion of St Mark which the French chiselled away after 1797.
- Palazzo Brandolin
On Fondamenta Toffetti, opposite the squero (gondola workshop) where gondolas are born, this 16th-century palazzo overlooking the rio di San Trovaso today seems one of the many sober buildings of Dorsoduro.
- Campo San Trovaso
This campo (a Venetian square) in Dorsoduro unfolds on two levels: a green area with trees and a distinctive raised mound at its centre.
- The Church of San Trovaso and the Historic Squero
In a quiet, tree-lined campo (Venetian square) in Dorsoduro stands the church of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, which Venetians have always called San Trovaso: a dialect shortening that fused the two names into one. A church stood here as early as the 11th century.
- Palazzo Nani
On the Fondamenta Nani, a stone’s throw from Campo di San Trovaso and the famous squero (boatyard) where gondolas are born, this 15th-century pointed-arch facade is one of the oldest buildings on the rio. It was a palace of the Barbarigo — the family of the two brother doges, Marco and Agostino, who, Tassini recalls, were both born here — and came to the Nani as a wedding dowry: Elena, daughter of Doge Agostino, brought it to her husband Giorgio Nani, and their son Bernardo founded the ’di San Trovaso’ branch here.
- Fondamenta Bonlini
One of the most photographed fondamente (canalside walkways) in Dorsoduro runs along the rio di San Trovaso, between the campo of the church of Santi Gervasio e Protasio and the Zattere, in a place once called the Borgo di San Trovaso: the name survives in the Ponte di Borgo, which joins the fondamenta to that of the Ognissanti.
- The Church of the Ognissanti
On the quiet Fondamenta degli Ognissanti (canalside walkway), at the western edge of Dorsoduro, stands a church born of a miracle: here in the 15th century the Cistercian nuns fleeing unhealthy Torcello took refuge, and here, in 1504, an image of the Madonna shone with celestial light, drawing the entire city — and the alms to build the present church, consecrated in 1586.
- The Church of the Gesuati and the Visitazione
On the Zattere, facing the Giudecca Canal, two churches stand side by side, linked by a shared history: the small Santa Maria della Visitazione, Venice’s first Renaissance church, begun in 1494, and the grand Santa Maria del Rosario, known as the Gesuati, built between 1726 and 1736 by Giorgio Massari for the Dominicans who took over from the suppressed Poveri Gesuati.
- Calle Trevisan
A calle and a sotoportico at Sant’Agnese, between the Zattere and the rio degli Ognissanti, taking their name from the palazzo Trevisan — ’disfigured in a thousand ways’ already in Tassini’s day, but still standing with its façade facing the Giudecca.
- Fondamenta delle Zattere e Ponte della Calcina
The Fondamenta delle Zattere is Dorsoduro’s long, sunlit waterfront, running for over a kilometre along the Giudecca Canal, from Punta della Dogana to the Stazione Marittima.
- Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati
At the Zattere al Ponte Longo, at number 1402, a severe sixteenth-century palace has looked out over the Giudecca canal for almost half a millennium without ever really having changed family: it was built by a branch of the Giustinian linked by marriage to the Morosini, passed by blood to the Recanati — a family from Badia Polesine enrolled in the patriciate in the seventeenth century — and still belongs today to the descendants of the Giustinian Recanati.
- Palazzo Molin (alle Zattere)
On the Zattere, facing the Giudecca Canal, Palazzo Molin ’dell’Adriatica’ displays its beautiful late-Gothic façade of pointed arches, built between the 15th and 16th centuries on this shore, which the Republic paved from 1519, from Santa Marta to the Dogana di Mare, because the rafts loaded with timber that gave the bank its name moored here.
- Scuola dei Luganegheri
At the Zattere, at number 1473, a palazzo looks onto the Giudecca Canal with a niche on its façade: inside stands St Anthony Abbot, the saint with the little pig at his feet — and it is the signature of his patrons, the luganegheri, Venice’s pork butchers and salami makers.
- Campo San Basegio
Between the Zattere and San Sebastiano, in one of the most working-class neighbourhoods of Dorsoduro, Campo San Basegio (a campo is a square) is a village square: the 1558 wellhead in the centre, laundry hung out to dry, the trattoria with tables outside.
- Church of San Sebastiano
In the quiet campo of Dorsoduro opens what many call Paolo Veronese’s ’Sistine Chapel’: San Sebastiano — ’San Bastian’, the Venetians say — the church of the Girolimini friars which the painter transformed, between 1555 and 1570, into the most extraordinary collective self-portrait of Venetian painting: ceilings, frescoes, organ, presbytery and even the choir doors.
- Palazzo Ariani (poi Minotto)
At the corner of the Fondamenta Briati, almost opposite the church of the Angelo Raffaele, stands one of the oldest Gothic palaces in the city: Palazzo Ariani, three storeys of 14th-century tracery that for centuries were the home of a very old family.
- Fondamenta del Soccorso
A quiet quay along the rio dei Carmini, between San Sebastiano and the Fondamenta Briati.
- Fondamenta Briati
Along the rio dei Carmini (a canal) — which in this stretch is itself called Rio Briati — between Campo Santa Margherita and San Sebastiano, the Fondamenta Briati (a fondamenta is a canalside street) owes its name to a man who defied Murano: Giuseppe Briati, the master glassmaker who in 1739 obtained from the Ten permission to light a crystal furnace in the centre of Venice — the first exception after four and a half centuries of prohibition.
- Fondamenta Barbarigo
This fondamenta runs along the rio dell’Angelo Raffaele — the Anzolo Rafael of the Venetians, the church that gives the water its name — in the quietest and once almost rural part of Dorsoduro, where the canal flows a little further on into the Giudecca; and it is not to be confused with the Fondamenta Duodo or Barbarigo at Santa Maria Zobenigo.
- Campo dell'Angelo
In the heart of Dorsoduro, clustered around one of Venice’s oldest churches, Campo de l’Anzolo Rafael, a quiet campo (Venetian square), still has its vera da pozzo (stone wellhead).
- Church of the Angelo Raffaele
In a silent corner of Dorsoduro, overlooking its rio, the church of the Angelo Raffaele - the Anzolo Rafael of the Venetians - is one of the city’s most ancient foundations.
- Fondamenta di Lizza Fusina
The Fondamenta di Lizza Fusina looks onto the rio di San Nicolò, in the district of Dorsoduro, in a neighbourhood that has always been working-class: fishermen, labourers and port stevedores.
- Church of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli
In the remotest corner of Dorsoduro, where Venice turned into lagoon and salt marsh, San Nicolò dei Mendicoli is one of the city’s oldest and most popular churches: the first building perhaps dates to the 7th century, coeval with the cathedral of Torcello, on an island called Mendigola - unless ’mendicoli’ simply recalls the mendicants, the poor folk of fishermen and porters who lived here: the Nicolotti, the popular faction rival to the Castellani, which elected its own ’doge’ in the church.
- Church and Convent of Santa Teresa
At the far edge of Dorsoduro, where the canals grow narrow and the silence is almost total, the Fondamenta delle Terese keeps the story of a prodigy girl: Maria Ferrazzo — born in 1623 to Lodovico and Maddalena Poli — whom the plague of 1630 left orphaned at seven of her parents and, a few days later, of the uncle who had taken her in. Raised in a house of pious virgins where her companions soon looked at her as a teacher, with the help of the Carmelite father Bonaventura Pinzoni she founded here, in 1647, a monastery of Discalced Carmelites for herself and fourteen other young sisters — the Senate, won over, supported it generously and took on its patronage — and then three more monasteries in Padua, Vicenza and Verona.
- Fondamenta dell'Arzere
The Fondamenta de l’Arzere runs along the rio of the same name in Dorsoduro, between the Ponte de le Terese and the junction of the rii of Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Marta.
- Campiello Terren
A pocket-sized campiello on the westernmost edge of old Venice, in the district of San Nicolo dei Mendicoli: on one side the Fondamenta d’Arzere, on the other the Calle dell’Olio, and then the rio. The name is a miniature urban-planning document: ’Terren’ means terrain, and empty terrain was here - with a few tumbledown cottages - when the Panizza bought it in the 17th century.
- Ponte Storto (al Campiello Terren)
A wooden bridge — structure, railings and all — that crosses the rio del Tentor (a small canal) at an angle, in a quiet corner of Dorsoduro a stone’s throw from the church and former prison of Santa Maria Maggiore.
- Church of Santa Maria Maggiore
Two steps from Piazzale Roma, overlooking its rio - which here is also called ’de le Procuratie’ - survives a church that was one of the richest galleries in Venice: Santa Maria Maggiore, deconsecrated for two centuries.
- Fondamenta delle Procuratie
The Fondamenta delle Procuratie runs along the rio di Santa Maria Maggiore, at the western end of Dorsoduro, and closes together with the parallel Fondamenta dei Cereri a neighbourhood born in the 16th century for charity.
- Palazzo Rizzo
On the fondamenta that runs along the rio (a small canal) of Santa Maria Maggiore, in the San Nicolò dei Mendicoli quarter of Dorsoduro, overlooks a 17th-century building now divided into dwellings: it was the palazzo of the Rizzo, fabulously rich goldsmiths of Rialto who in 1687 — by paying — were admitted to the Venetian patriciate, and they left such a mark that the nearby bridge, formerly ’delle Procuratie’, is still called Ponte de Cà Rizzi and leads to the opposite bank, towards the Cazziola.
- Fondamenta San Marco (Dorsoduro)
This bank of the rio dei Tentor (a Venetian canal) — also called the rio della Madonna, after the dye works once found here — lies in the working-class heart of western Dorsoduro, in the parish of Santa Maria Maggiore.
- Fondamenta dei Cereri
The Fondamenta dei Cereri — a fondamenta is a canalside walkway — in Dorsoduro, along the rio di Santa Maria Maggiore (a Venetian canal) which upstream becomes the Rio del Tentor after the dyeworks that looked onto it, preserves the name of the craft of the cereri, the candle makers: here and at the nearby Ponte della Cereria — a name transplanted in 1933 onto the new bridge of the Rio Novo — the wax masters had their workshops.
- Fondamenta Rossa
The Fondamenta Rossa runs along the rio Briati in Dorsoduro, in the Carmini district, not far from Campo Santa Margherita.
- Palazzo Zenobio
On the Rio dei Carmini (a rio is a small canal), a stone’s throw from the Ponte del Soccorso, Palazzo Zenobio is a solid and rich dwelling of the late 17th century, built to a design by Antonio Gaspari for the Zenobio patricians, ’friends of the arts and of study’: here Luca Carlevaris lived and worked, so much so that he remained known as the painter ’of Ca’ Zenobio’, and Lazzarini too painted a mezzanine here.
- Palazzo Foscarini
Opposite the church of the Carmini, on the rio di Santa Margherita, this grand construction — rebuilt in the 17th century and enlarged in the first half of the 18th — was the dwelling of the branch of the Foscarini that gave Venice one of its last doges: Marco Foscarini, procurator of St Mark’s, librarian of the Marciana and official historiographer of the Republic, elected doge in 1762 and dead a few months later, in March 1763.
- Casa di Otello
On the Campo dei Carmini (square), at number 2615, Venice preserves the house of the Moor: an ancient Gothic dwelling of the Guoro, who had inherited it from the Civran, which tradition has called the ’Casa di Otello’ for centuries.
- The Carmini Complex
Between Campo Santa Margherita and the quiet Campo dei Carmini stands a complex that tells seven centuries of Venetian devotion: the church of Santa Maria del Carmelo, known as dei Carmini, and its Scuola Grande.
- Campo Santa Margherita
Campo Santa Margherita (a campo is a Venetian square) is the drawing room of Dorsoduro and one of the widest and liveliest campi in Venice: in the morning fish stalls and greengrocers, children playing and elderly people on the benches; at sunset the students of Ca’ Foscari and the Iuav spill out among the bacari (traditional wine bars) — just as a century ago the socialist clubs and bohemian poets gathered here.
- Scuola dei Varotari
In the middle of Campo Santa Margherita, between the market stalls and the café tables, stands a building that looks as if it had been planted there by chance: small, isolated on every side, with arched windows and a relief set into the facade — the Madonna della Misericordia opening her mantle, with the Child in a mandorla on her breast.
- The Church of San Pantalon and Fumiani's Illusion
From the campo, San Pantalon looks like a church forgotten halfway: a wall of raw bricks, without a façade, that promises nothing.
- Campiello Angaran and the Medallion of the Byzantine Emperor
Campiello Angaran (a campiello is a small square) is a little pause in the dense fabric of Dorsoduro, a few steps from San Pantalon.
- Calle San Pantalon
The calle (street) runs alongside a very old parish church.
- Crosera San Pantalon
’Crosera’ is one of the rarest words in Venetian toponymy: it denotes a street that crosses, that cuts through the fabric of the calli (narrow streets) — and this one, in Dorsoduro, links Campiello Angaran with Calle Larga, skirting the flank of the church of San Pantalon.
- Ca' Foscari
Ca’ Foscari seems made to be seen from the water.
- Palazzo Secco-Dolfin
On the rio of Ca’ Foscari, a stone’s throw from San Pantalon, Ca’ Dolfin — or Palazzo Secco Dolfin — hides behind its ’Roman-style’ Baroque facade, all white Istrian stone, one of the great banqueting halls of Venice: here the Dolfin brothers had Giambattista Tiepolo paint, between 1725 and 1729, ten canvases with stories of republican Rome — sold in 1872 for six thousand lire and today scattered between the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the Metropolitan in New York and the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna — and here in 1709 the King of Denmark, Frederick IV, was feted in one of the most memorable parties of the century.
- Campiello degli Squellini
A silent campiello of Dorsoduro, a stone’s throw from Ca’ Foscari, which owes its name to a vanished trade: the ’squelini’, or scudeleri, were the makers of bowls - plates, tankards, pots and tableware of maiolica and terracotta - and here, under your feet, they had their kilns, so much so that Sabellico, at the end of the 15th century, recorded the place in Latin as Figulorum area: the square of the potters.
- Calle delle Botteghe
The street of shops par excellence: Venice has dozens of calli named after a trade — del Forner, del Tintor, dei Botteri — but ’de le Botteghe’ in the whole city there are only two — the other is at San Barnaba, in Dorsoduro — a sign that here the concentration of shops was special.
- Ca' Rezzonico
Ca’ Rezzonico looks like a palace conceived in a single breath, but it is the result of a century of Venetian ambition.
- Ponte dei Pugni
On the rio di San Barnaba (a small canal), a stone’s throw from the campo (square), the Ponte dei Pugni — the Bridge of Fists — was for centuries the theatre of Venice’s most spectacular popular brawls: here the rival factions of the Castellani and the Nicolotti came to blows, each trying to hurl their opponents into the canal.
- Campo San Barnaba
One of the most scenographic campi of Dorsoduro, on the route that descends from the Accademia Bridge towards Piazzale Roma: in front flows the rio with the fruit barge moored, behind towers one of the oldest bell towers in the city, and the whole southern side is occupied by the neoclassical façade of the church of San Barnaba, which legend has founded by the Adami family in 809, was destroyed by the great fire of 1105, reconsecrated in 1350 by two bishops together and remade in 1749 to a design by Lorenzo Boschetti.
- Church of San Barnaba
The church that closes off the campo (square) of San Barnaba is older than its neoclassical façade suggests: it was founded in 809 by the Adami (or Adorni) family, destroyed in the great fire of 1105, rebuilt with the alms of the faithful and consecrated in 1350 by two bishops, Francesco Mociense, a Franciscan, and Agnellino Sudense, a Dominican.
- Fondamenta Lombardo
The Fondamenta Lombardo runs along the rio del Malpaga, in the parish of Santi Gervasio e Protasio in Dorsoduro, between San Barnaba and the Fondamenta de la Toletta.
- Chiesa delle Eremite
At the far end of the fondamenta de le Romite, where the rio bends towards the Giudecca, there is a church you almost fail to notice: a sober façade in line with the fondamenta, a thermal window, two small barred windows beside the door.
- Fondamenta della Toletta
This Dorsoduro bank takes its name from a bridge that no longer exists.
- The Ponte delle Maravegie and Palazzo Bollani
On the rio di San Trovaso (a Venetian canal), in the old parish of Santi Gervasio e Protasio, the Ponte delle Maravegie — brick, iron bands in Gothic arches on little Istrian-stone columns and three coats of arms carved on its side — joins the Fondamenta Toffetti to the Priuli, in a still-quiet, working-class Dorsoduro.
- Palazzo Giustinian (formerly Basadonna-Priuli)
On Fondamenta Priuli, at no. 1012 opposite Palazzo Bollani, this 17th-century palace has changed name with almost every owner: built in the 14th century for a branch of the Contarini, it was bought in 1626 by the Basadonna brothers, who entrusted its modernisation to Baldassare Longhena — the architect of the Salute — passed to the Priuli in 1758 and finally to the counts Giustinian Recanati.
- Fondamenta Priuli
The bank that runs along the eastern side of the rio (a Venetian canal) di San Trovaso, towards its mouth on the Giudecca Canal.
- Palazzo Contarini Corfù
On the Grand Canal between Ca’ Rezzonico and the Accademia bridge, at the mouth of the Rio di San Trovaso, Palazzo Contarini Corfù is the Gothic half of one of the most famous pairs of palaces in Venice.
- Palazzo Mocenigo Gambara
On the Grand Canal, between the palazzi Contarini degli Scrigni and Querini alla Carità, opposite Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Palazzo Mocenigo Gambara is recognisable by its austere and deliberately asymmetrical front: built around the mid-17th century in place of a 16th-century building — perhaps designed by Mauro Codussi and documented in the engravings — it was the home of the Mocenigo and here the admiral Lazzaro was born, hero of the war of Candia.