A walk with 84 stops, from St Mark's Square to Palazzo Agnusdio.
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.
- Procuratie di San Marco
On three sides of St Mark’s Square runs the continuous rhythm of the Procuratie, the residences of the Procurators of St Mark - the Republic’s highest magistracy after the Doge, nine men divided into three offices: de supra, de citra and de ultra.
- 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.
- Palazzo Molin alla Frezzeria
At the Ramo dei Fuseri, a few steps from the narrow and lively Frezzeria, Palazzo Molin — also called del Cuoridoro — has two faces: on the calle (street) opens a modern façade bearing an epigraph in memory of Wolfgang Goethe’s stay in 1786, while the palace’s true face, a fine 15th-century Venetian-Gothic façade, looks onto the rio dei Barcaroli and can be admired from the bridge of the same name.
- Ponte dei Fuseri
A small stone bridge between San Marco and San Luca, over the rio (small canal) of the same name: the calle (street) that crosses it leads from the Frezzeria to Campo San Luca, and just before it a narrow ramo descends to touch the water.
- Campo San Luca
Ask a Venetian where the centre of Venice is, and many will point here.
- The Church of San Luca
Halfway between San Marco and Rialto, looking out over the rio (a Venetian canal) that gives it water and the campiello (small square) that gives it air, San Luca is one of the oldest parishes in Venice: it was founded in the 11th century by the Dandolo and Pizzamano families, in Veneto-Byzantine form with three naves, at a strategic point in the city’s trade.
- Calle del Forner
From Campo San Luca, the commercial drawing room of Venice, this calle (a Venetian lane) slipped towards the Corte del Teatro: ’forner’ in dialect means baker, and here an oven baked bread for the heart of the city.
- Teatro Goldoni
Behind Campo San Luca (a campo is a Venetian square), a couple of steps from the Rialto, a mosaic sign announces the oldest theatre in Venice - and the fourth oldest in Italy among those still staging: the Teatro Carlo Goldoni, opened in 1622 as the Teatro Vendramin di San Salvatore.
- Palazzo Farsetti and Loredan (City Hall)
On the Riva del Carbon — so called from the coal vessels that used to moor here — two 13th-century Veneto-Byzantine palaces have housed Venice’s City Hall for a century and a half.
- Fondamenta del Carbon
Between Ca’ Farsetti and Palazzo Bembo, this strip of bank on the Grand Canal was the petrol station of pre-industrial Venice: here the rafts loaded with coal moored, and here was sold the fuel that kept furnaces, kitchens and foundries alight.
- The Gothic House of the Dandolo and of the Aretino
On the Fondamenta del Carbon (a canalside walkway), along the rio di San Luca (a Venetian canal) and a short walk from Rialto, a 14th-century Gothic house bearing the Dandolo coat of arms is the sentinel of a whole family quarter: around here, between the rio and the Grand Canal, the Dandolo had their houses for centuries, until the fall of the Republic.
- Palazzo Dolfin Manin (Banca d'Italia)
Just before the Rialto, on the Grand Canal, the white portico of Palazzo Dolfin Manin is one of the most severe and admired facades in Venice: Jacopo Sansovino designed it between 1538 and 1547 for the Dolfin, who wanted to replace two medieval houses with a palace ’in the Roman manner’ that cost thirty thousand ducats.
- Riva del Ferro
Today this bank is one of the busiest terraces on the Grand Canal, lined with hotels, café tables and views of the Rialto Bridge.
- Rialto Bridge
The Rialto Bridge is the geometric and symbolic heart of Venice: for centuries the only stable link between the two banks of the Grand Canal, ’citra et ultra canalem’, at the point where the city was born and traded.
- Ruga degli Orefici
Venice’s most commercial street has a name that is a contract: ruga, in the old dialect, is the street of the shops, and the orefici — the ’oresi’ (goldsmiths) — were so much the masters here that in 1331 the Maggior Consiglio (the Great Council) obliged them to work and sell gold only on the island of Rialto, where it was also easier to keep the fires of their crucibles under control.
- Ruga Vecchia San Giovanni
Rise on tiptoe and look at the sky: here it narrows to a blue ribbon, squeezed by façades that lean little by little one over the other.
- Church of San Giovanni Elemosinario
In the dense web of calli at Rialto, along the Ruga Vecchia - formerly Ruga dei Oresi, of the goldsmiths - hides one of the oldest and most precious churches of Venice: San Giovanni Elemosinario, called ’San Zuane de Rialto’.
- Rughetta Ravano
A few metres of calle (street) behind the Rialto market, and a name that smells of the shop counter.
- Church of Sant'Aponal
In the quiet little drawing-room of Campo Sant’Aponal (a square), a stone’s throw from the Rialto, the church of the same name tells the story of Venice against the light: it was founded by Ravennans — the Sciavola and perhaps the Rampana families — around 1034 and dedicated to St Apollinaris, the patron saint of their city, whom the dialect compressed into ’Aponal’.
- Rio Terrà e Campiello dei Meloni
It looks like a simple little square tucked inside San Polo, halfway between Campo Sant’Aponal and Campo San Polo.
- Calle e Ponte della Madonnetta
Halfway between the Rialto and Campo San Polo, the Ponte de la Madoneta crosses the rio of the same name, a small Venetian canal, just a few steps from the Santa Sofia traghetto, the gondola ferry.
- Campo San Polo
Pause in Campo San Polo and take it in: this is Venice’s largest campo (Venetian square), second only to Piazza San Marco among the city’s open spaces.
- Palazzo Dona in Campo San Polo
At number 2177 in Campo San Polo (a Venetian square) stands Palazzo Donà, also known as Donà Brusa, a Renaissance residence dating from the early 16th century.
- Salizzada San Polo
When the streets of Venice were still packed earth, the few paved ones earned a name of honour: ’salizzada’, the paved street — flint at first, then the trachyte slabs the Venetians call masegni.
- The Church of San Polo and the Oratory of the Crucifix
The church that gives its name to the sestiere (district) is one of the oldest in Venice: according to the chronicles, doge Pietro Tradonico founded it in 837 — though other writers credited the Sievoli family, and perhaps the uncertainty comes precisely from the families fighting over a church they had only rebuilt.
- Palazzo Corner Mocenigo
Campo San Polo, the largest square in Venice after St Mark’s, is an open-air drawing room onto which two faces of the city’s sculpture look out: at number 2177, the pointed-arched portal of Palazzo Donà adorned with 14th-century reliefs of animals and floral motifs — a stone bestiary; and on the opposite side, at 2128, the sturdy Renaissance mass of Palazzo Corner Mocenigo, designed by Michele Sanmicheli with the monumental front on the rio (small canal) that you admire from the Ponte di San Polo.
- Calle dei Saoneri
A calle (a narrow Venetian street) in the sestiere (district) of San Polo, between the salizada di San Polo and the rio terà dei Nomboli (a filled-in canal), which together with the Calle Seconda dei Saoneri takes its name from the soap makers.
- Carlo Goldoni's House at Palazzo Centani
In San Polo, between the rio di San Toma and Calle dei Nomboli, Palazzo Centani - Ca’ Centanni for the Venetians - is an intact 15th-century Gothic palazzo: courtyard with a wellhead adorned with lion heads, an elegant Istrian-stone external staircase.
- Ponte San Toma
The Ponte San Toma crosses the rio (a small Venetian canal) of the same name in the sestiere (district) of San Polo, between the Fondamenta San Toma (a canalside walkway) and the Calle dei Nomboli: a stone bridge with a brick structure and Gothic-arch iron bands.
- La Scuola dei Calegheri
In campo San Tomà, opposite the church, a brick façade with a great ogee-arched portal was for three centuries the home of Venice’s shoemakers: the Scoletta dei Calegheri, seat of the guild that united those who made shoes and boots with those who made slippers and clogs.
- Church of San Tomà
Intimate Campo San Tomà (square), with its well in the middle and café tables outside, is a long-distance dialogue between two façades: the classicising front of the church, rebuilt in the 18th century by Bognolo and crowned by Cabianca’s group of the Incredulity of St Thomas, and opposite it the Gothic façade of the Scoletta dei Calegheri, the shoemakers’ guildhall.
- Calle del Campaniel detta Civran
A calle (Venetian street) with two names stitched together: ‘del Campaniel’, after the bell tower of San Tomà that once stood at its entrance on the campo (square) — it is gone now, though its base survives, topped by an open-sided belfry — and ‘detta Civran’, after the family’s palazzo at the Grand Canal end. The Civrans were an ancient family: Malfatti traced their origins to Cervia, and their coat of arms bears a silver stag.
- Palazzo Balbi
At the level of the most spectacular elbow of the Grand Canal, the celebrated ’Volta de Canal’, where the water bends and every façade becomes a stage, the massive bulk of Palazzo Balbi stands beside the Gothic tracery of Ca’ Foscari.
- Fondamenta del Forner
One of San Polo’s quietest stretches of waterfront: the Fondamenta del Forner, a canalside walkway, runs along the rio (a Venetian canal) della Frescada, halfway between Campo dei Frari, a Venetian square, and the San Tomà basin.
- Campo dei Frari
One of the broadest and quietest campi (a campo is a square) in Venice, all around the brick bulk of the Frari basilica.
- The Frari Basilica
In the heart of San Polo, the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari announces itself with a brick façade, a severe bell tower and an interior capable of making the city seem small.
- Archivio di Stato di Venezia
Beside the Basilica dei Frari opens a building that preserves the written memory of Venice: the State Archives.
- Campo San Rocco
Behind the apses of the Frari, in what looks like a theatre backdrop, opens one of the most scenic campi of Venice: on one side the mighty bare-brick Gothic apses of the basilica, on the other the white masses of the church and the Scuola Grande di San Rocco - the confraternity that gathered the relics of the saint, protector of plague victims, and entrusted Tintoretto with the most famous cycle of paintings in the city.
- The Church of San Rocco
The only confraternity church in Venice conceived as a shrine to its own saint: a first church of San Rocco had already arisen on this site in 1478, then demolished: when in 1489 the Scuola Grande obtained from the Council of Ten permission to return here beside the Frari Minori, it rebuilt it and wanted it as the shrine of the pilgrim saint, protector against the plague, who had arrived in Venice in 1485 and was transferred here in March 1490.
- Scuola Grande di San Rocco
On campo San Rocco (a campo is a Venetian square), beside the church of the same name, stands the seat of Venice’s richest lay confraternity: founded in 1478 as a scuola of ’battuti’ (flagellant lay brothers) dedicated to St Roch, the thaumaturge pilgrim invoked against the plague, it became a Scuola Grande just two years later and in 1485 received the saint’s very body.
- Castelforte
Behind the bulk of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco opens Campo Castelforte, a junction of rii where the water draws the square more than the stone does: from here you enjoy one of the most unusual architectural views in Venice, the boundless flank of the Scuola mirrored in the canal.
- Calle Larga e Campiello delle Chiovere
Here Venice was an expanse of grass and wood.
- Calle dietro l'Archivio
The name is of a disarming honesty: this calle runs behind the Archivio di Stato, that is behind the Cà Grande dei Frari, the immense convent that for two centuries has guarded the papers of the Republic.
- Calle Campazzo
A calle (a narrow Venetian street) in San Polo whose name is a photograph of an erased landscape.
- Calle e Sottoportico della Lacca
This calle (street), with its sottoportico (covered passageway), lies in the San Polo sestiere (district).
- Campiello della Scuola
A medieval courtyard that has survived intact in the heart of San Polo: the Campiello della Scuola (a campiello is a small square) preserves the position and dimensions of the courtyard from which it grew, when the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista — the confraternity of the ’battuti’ (flagellants) founded in 1261 — settled here, renting rooms in a Badoer hospice beside the family church — and in 1414, made rich by devotion to its relic of the Cross, bought the hospice outright.
- The Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista
In the campiello closed off by Pietro Lombardo’s marble screen stands the oldest Scuola Grande of Venice still functioning: a lay confraternity of ’battuti’ (flagellants) founded in 1261 near Sant’Aponal and moved here in the 1300s, where it keeps a relic of the True Cross — donated in 1369 by Filippo de Mézières, chancellor of the kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, who handed it over on his knees and bareheaded after swearing on the Gospels.
- Church of San Giovanni Evangelista
More than a church, it is the oratory of one of Venice’s most glorious confraternities: San Giovanni Evangelista, a stone’s throw from the Frari, lived in shared life with the Scuola Grande (confraternity) of the same name, keeper since 1369 of a fragment of the True Cross.
- Calle dell'Olio o del Caffettier
Two names, two shops, neither surviving: this calle (street) in Santa Croce, which skirts the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista towards the Fondamenta de la Latte, was called dell’Ogio and del Cafetier — an oil depot on one side of memory, a coffee shop on the other.
- Fondamenta e Ponte della Latte
The Ponte della Latte spans the rio di San Giovanni Evangelista and joins the short Fondamenta della Latte, in the sestiere of Santa Croce, to the Fondamenta di Rio Marin — where in ancient times ran the boundaries of the parish of San Simeone Profeta.
- Fondamenta Rio Marin
One of the two banks flanking the Rio Marin — its straight line betrays its artificial origin — in the parish of San Simeone Profeta: Venetians also call it ’dei Garzotti’, after the carders who worked here.
- Campiello e Calle del Cristo
A campiello of the sestiere of Santa Croce overlooking the water, at the exact point where the Rio Marin — the canal dug by hand at the wish of a Marin Dandolo — ends its run and continues as the Rio de San Giacomo.
- Campiello delle Strope
A small secluded courtyard a stone’s throw from Campo San Giacomo dall’Orio, in the working-class heart of Santa Croce: low houses, the nizioleto that signs the wall and in the centre a vera da pozzo (wellhead) in Istrian stone with an octagonal cornice supported by eight volutes of leaves, on which stands out the carved face of a bearded man; beside it drips the little cast-iron column fountain, from which Venetians still draw in a continuous jet. The name has deceived the toponymists: some saw in it the ’strope’, the willow ties for the vines, but in the archives a De Stropis family pops up living precisely in this contrada in the 15th century.
- The Campiello dell'Anatomia and the Rio Marin axis
In the silence behind campo San Giacomo dall’Orio opens the Corte de l’Anatomia, also called Fiorenzuola: a name that speaks of corpses, scalpels and one of the first anatomical theatres in Europe.
- Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio
In the oldest part of Santa Croce, Campo San Giacomo dall’Orio (a campo is a square) proves that Venice can still be a neighbourhood: the trees — a rarity in a city of stone — the children playing, the bacari (the traditional wine bars) with chairs outside.
- The Campo and the Church of San Giacomo dall'Orio
On the campo (Venetian square) of the same name, in the heart of Santa Croce, stands one of the city’s oldest churches.
- Calle del Tintor
A continuation of the Salizada di San Stae, this calle runs from Campo San Stae to the Ponte del Parruchetta - exactly on the border between Santa Croce and San Polo.
- Ponte del Parrucchietta
On the Rio di San Giacomo dall’Orio (a small canal), where the Calle del Tentor of Santa Croce meets the Rio Terà Primo of San Polo (a filled-in canal, now a street), runs a bridge of bricks and stones with iron bands in roundels and scrolls and, at the centre of the arch, the traces of a chiselled-off lion of St Mark.
- The Invisible Bell Tower of San Boldo
In Campo San Boldo there is a bell tower that does not ring and hardly looks like a bell tower: a Gothic tower without a top, cut off at the height of the houses and turned into a residential wall.
- Campo Sant'Agostino
Campo Sant’Agostin is a campo without a church: the one that gave it its name — one of the oldest in Venice — was pulled down in 1873 and in its place today there are council flats.
- Ponte Donà
The Ponte Donà is a small brick bridge crossing the rio di Sant’Agostin a step away from Campo Sant’Agostino, in the heart of San Polo: stone and brick, iron bands in symmetrical oval patterns, and at the centre of the arch the traces of a chiselled-off St Mark’s lion.
- Rio Terrà Secondo
The continuation of the Rio Terrà Primo between San Giacomo dall’Orio and Sant’Agostin, this broad, quiet street occupies the bed of the rio del Calice — the final stretch of the rio de la Pergola, which opened into the rio del Parucheta under a bridge of the same name of which no trace remains — filled in in 1806, in the Napoleonic season when Venice ’modernised’ itself by covering over the minor canals.
- Calle del Scaleter
A calle of San Polo, in the mesh of streets between Campo Sant’Agostin and San Polo, where the name recalls a sweet trade: the scaleter was the ciambellajo, the pastry cook.
- Ponte Bernardo
Ponte de Ca’ Bernardo crosses the rio di San Polo, a small Venetian canal, just a few steps from the apses of the Frari, at the heart of a little island that has kept even its old name: San Boldo.
- Palazzo Bernardo and its Gothic staircase
At the junction of the rii (Venetian canals) of San Polo, Sant’Agostin and delle Do Torre, the great pointed-arch bulk of Ca’ Bernardo towers over the bridge that bears its name, between the Calle del Scaleter and the Sant’Agostino area.
- Ponte del Forner
A simple iron footbridge — flat structure with stone steps and scrolled parapets — thrown across the rio de San Boldo to ease the passage between Santa Croce and San Polo — the rio here marks exactly the boundary between the two sestieri —: the Ponte del Forner joins the Calle Longa di Santa Maria Mater Domini to the Calle del Cristo, and its steps insinuate themselves into the two calli that lead to it. The name recalls a forno, a baker’s shop that must have worked nearby, but Venetians more often call it after Sant’Antonio, for a 19th-century niche shrine of Istrian stone, protected by a little wrought-iron gate, which keeps a plaster statue of the saint of Padua.
- Calle dell'Agnello
No lamb grazes around here: the name comes from the Dalla Agnella family, fodder merchants who arrived from the Treviso area, who here at Santa Maria Mater Domini had their palace overlooking the rio delle Due Torri.
- Il Ponte delle Tette
On the rio di San Cassiano, in the heart of San Polo, the Ponte delle Tette bears Venice’s boldest name.
- Calle Rio Terrà Rampani
Here you are walking over a canal.
- Palazzo Albrizzi
Between the Ponte delle Tette and the campiello of the same name stands Palazzo Albrizzi, one of the best-preserved patrician houses in Venice — and still inhabited today by descendants of the family.
- Calle e Fondamenta del Banco Salviati
A quay and a sotoportego (covered passageway) still bear the name of a Florentine bank that disappeared four centuries ago. Here, between the rio (a Venetian canal) di Sant’Aponal and the rio delle Beccarie — called Magadesso in the 13th century, after the Magadesia family, and rio di Cà Bellegno in the 14th — the Salviati, immensely wealthy Tuscan bankers, had their homes and offices.
- Ponte Storto
A bridge that is not straight because in Venice nothing is straight: the Ponte Storto (’Crooked Bridge’) crosses the rio de San Aponal (a small canal) diagonally, joining two calli (streets) that face each other without lining up. But its real entanglement is amorous.
- Calle dei Sbianchesini
In the heart of San Polo, between Campo Sant’Aponal (a square) and Campo San Silvestro, runs a narrow calle (street) covered twice over by sotoporteghi (covered passageways): the Calle dei Sbianchesini.
- Campo San Silvestro
Just a short walk from the Rialto market, there’s a campo (Venetian square) that seems to belong to another age: Campo San Silvestro, broad and paved, with a handsome vera da pozzo (wellhead) at its centre and the feel of a village in the world’s most mercantile city.
- Chiesa di San Silvestro
Just a short walk from the bustle of Rialto, on the small campo (Venetian square) of the same name, the church of San Silvestro looks like a quiet neoclassical parish church.
- Rio Terrà San Silvestro
Rio Terà San Silvestro is one of the widest and liveliest streets in Rialto.
- Fondamenta del Vin
The Fondamenta del Vin, a canalside walkway, is the Grand Canal’s most ‘drunken’ waterfront: here, at San Silvestro on the San Polo bank, wine boats had a stazio (a designated mooring) — and still did in Tassini’s day. Wine gave the place its name because the Uffizio del Dazio del Vin (Wine Duty Office) also stood here; it was demolished in 1842 to make way for the Lottery Directorate.
- Calle Larga Giacomo Mazzini
A broad commercial street of the sestiere of San Marco, between campo San Salvador and the riva del Ferro, a stone’s throw from the Rialto Bridge and its landing stages.
- Campo San Salvatore
At the end of the Mercerie, a step from Rialto, Campo San Salvador is one of the few places in Venice where you can read the Risorgimento in the open air. At the centre, at the entrance to Calle Larga Mazzini, rises a marble column erected in 1898 for the seventeen months of Daniele Manin’s republic: the 1848-49 revolt that pitted Venice against the Austrian occupation until the surrender.
- La Chiesa di San Zan Degola
In the silent Campo San Zan Degolà (a campo is a Venetian square), just behind the Fondaco dei Turchi, hides one of the oldest and most intact churches in Venice: San Giovanni Decollato — ’San Zuan di Golao’ in the old documents, later corrupted into ’San Zan Degolà’.
- Palazzo Corner della Regina
On the Santa Croce bank, a step before Ca’ Pesaro, Palazzo Corner della Regina is a white, theatrical mass that imposes itself on the Grand Canal like a stage backdrop.
- Palazzo Agnusdio
On the rio di Ca’ Pesaro (a Venetian canal), a couple of steps from San Stae, faces one of Venice’s most enigmatic palazzi: Palazzo Agnusdio, also called ’dei Quattro Evangelisti’ (of the Four Evangelists).