A walk with 96 stops, from St Mark's Square to Campiello Angaran and the Medallion of the Byzantine Emperor.
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.
- Naranzeria
Between the apse of San Giacomo di Rialto and the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, this corner on the Grand Canal was the orange warehouse: here the citrus fruit arriving from the Mediterranean basin was stored, in a Rialto that served as the city’s gateway to the East.
- Palazzo dei Camerlenghi
At the foot of the Rialto Bridge, San Polo side, this pentagonal palace follows the curve of the Grand Canal like a strongbox wedged into the vault: it was built by Guglielmo dei Grigi, called il Bergamasco, between 1525 and 1528, to a design by Codussi and Lombardo, at the wish of Doge Andrea Gritti — within the great building site that raised Rialto again after the fire of 1514.
- 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.
- 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’.
- Church of San Giacomo di Rialto
The smallest and oldest church in the commercial heart of Venice: the Venetians call it San Giacometo.
- Fabbriche Vecchie di Rialto
The long porticoed building that closes off Campo di Rialto towards the Erberia is the headquarters the Serenissima rebuilt after the fire of 1514: the Fabbriche Vecchie, designed by Antonio Abbondi, known as lo Scarpagnino, between 1520 and 1522.
- Gobbo di Rialto
In the campo of San Giacomo, in front of the oldest church in Venice, a naked, crouching man bears on his back a little flight of steps: it is the Gobbo di Rialto (the Hunchback of Rialto), sculpted by Pietro da Salò in 1541.
- Porticato del Banco Giro
Beneath the long portico that rings campo San Giacometto on two sides — topped for a stretch by the Fabbriche Vecchie di Rialto — the merchants gathered for their dealings: here was the seat of the circulating credit bank known as the ’Banco Giro’, the institution that, in effect, invented the bank transfer — payments made with a pen on the registers instead of coins counted one by one. At its feet kept watch the Gobbo di Rialto, the statue supporting the staircase, mute witness to deals, sentences and satires: from 1577 the Gobbo ’spoke’ like Rome’s Pasquino, and dialogued with a Venetian Marforio of his own, ’Marocco Popone’ — the little figure carved at the base of the column in the piazzetta, so called from the basket of melons beside it: the first satire published at Rialto was their exchange about a comet that appeared in the sky, ’Hastu visto Marocco che cometa?’ — ’Hast thou seen, Marocco, what a comet?’.
- The Rialto Markets (Erberia and Pescaria)
Rialto is Venice’s oldest market: ’Rivoaltus’, the high bank, was the very name of the city before it became Venice, and here, since 1097, the trade has been carried on that for centuries made the Serenissima the gateway to the Orient — organised as a proper market as early as 1322.
- Fabbriche Nuove di Rialto
Meekly following the great bend of the Grand Canal, between the Erberia (fruit and vegetable market) and the Pescheria (fish market), stretches the long façade of the Fabbriche Nuove di Rialto: the last piece in the reconstruction of the city’s commercial heart, designed by Jacopo Sansovino between 1552 and 1555 — beside Scarpagnino’s Fabbriche Vecchie, just thirty years older.
- Campo Cesare Battisti
In the heart of the Rialto market, between the Erbaria and the Casaria, opens a campo that has had three names.
- Pescheria Nuova
At the tip of the island of Rialto, where the Grand Canal makes its great bend, stands the Pescheria Nuova: the porticoed loggia where fish has been sold for more than a century, in a building that looks Gothic but dates from 1907, the work of the architect Domenico Rupolo and the painter-sculptor Cesare Laurenti, in that ’cold inspiration’ of the Venetian 15th century that the guidebooks condemned but which has entered the Venetians’ eyes as if it had always been there — solemnly inaugurated on 28 April 1907, for the seventh Biennale.
- Campo delle Beccarie
A campo that smells of history - and once of something quite different: here, a step from the Rialto Pescaria, was the heart of Venetian meat - the public slaughterhouse and the shops of the becheri, the butchers, who for centuries supplied the Republic.
- Calle e Sottoportico del Cappeller
Between the Campo delle Beccarie (square) and the Calle dei Botteri, behind the Rialto market, this calle (street) with its sotoportego (covered passageway) preserves the name of a trade: the ’cappeller’, the hatter who had his workshop here and who still existed when Tassini wrote his Curiosità, a century and a half ago. But older Venetians called it otherwise: the sotoportego and the calle were ’della Pigna’, the branch ’del Pero’ — two surnames of families of the parish of San Cassiano, and the arms of the Dalla Pigna are still carved on the sotoportego wall: not just any pine cone, but the sign of a spicer’s fondaco that became a family name.
- Calle dei Botteri
In the Venice of street plaques every name tells a trade: Calle dei Botteri, the Venetian calle (street) of the coopers, lies in the sestiere (district) of San Polo, a stone’s throw from the Rialto market, and ends on the Grand Canal exactly opposite Ca’ d’Oro.
- Calle Raspi
A short calle leading to one of the most photographed corners of minor Venice: the Ponticello Raspi, suspended over the rio delle Beccarie, the narrow canal that runs from the historic slaughterhouses of Rialto towards the Pescheria and the Grand Canal: beccarie were indeed the slaughterhouses, and for centuries the meat destined for the whole city passed through these narrow service waters hidden behind the Erbaria.
- Palazzo Muti Baglioni
In the maze of calli (alleys) behind the church of San Cassiano hides a giant: Palazzo Muti Baglioni, twenty-seven metres to the roof, the tallest private building in Venice — and almost impossible to see in its entirety, because it is squeezed into a calle where there is no room even to look at it. It was commissioned in 1602 by the Muti, very rich merchants from Bergamo who to make room bought and demolished the neighbouring buildings: a colossus that already then made an impression, so much so that a chronicler wrote it would have been even more marvellous on the Grand Canal.
- Campo San Cassiano
A quiet campo west of Rialto, dominated by the squared mass of the church of San Cassiano and its 13th-century bell tower: it looks like any corner of the city, and instead it guards a world record.
- Church of San Cassiano
In the heart of San Polo, in a secluded campo a stone’s throw from Ca’ Corner della Regina, the church of San Cassiano — once dedicated to St Cecilia — is one of Venice’s oldest foundations: a thousand years old, rebuilt several times and lined inside with an early-17th-century Baroque casket.
- Ponte Giovanni Andrea della Croce
On the rio di San Cassiano (a Venetian canal), between the campiello (small square) of the same name and the campo in front of the church, this stone bridge bears a name rare for a Venetian crossing: that of a physician.
- 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.
- 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 Gozzi
In the maze of Santa Croce, on the rio di Santa Maria Mater Domini — which old maps also call the rio delle Due Torri — is mirrored the 17th-century facade of Palazzo Gozzi: home of a wealthy Bergamo family of silk merchants, and house of the two writer brothers who divided 18th-century Venetian theatre.
- Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini
Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini is a quiet corte (a small Venetian courtyard) in the sestiere (one of Venice’s six districts) of Santa Croce, with a vera da pozzo (wellhead) at its centre and a rio (Venetian canal) beside it, crossed by the bridge towards Calle della Regina, a Venetian street.
- Case Zane
At number 2174, the Case Zane preserve one of Venice’s rare 13th-century Veneto-Byzantine façades.
- Casa Barbaro
At number 2179, opposite the 13th-century houses of the Zane, Casa Barbaro displays its 14th-century pointed-arch façade: pointed-arch windows in the Venetian Gothic style were an elegant hallmark of patrician homes before the Renaissance.
- Palazzetto Viaro, later Zane
At the far end of Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini — one of the most intact medieval glimpses of the city — at number 2123 there is a palazzetto that tells three centuries in one façade: early-14th-century Gothic on the piano nobile, Renaissance above, and on the sill a small ’walking’ lion that Venetians call the marchetto, which tradition links to the most famous conspiracy in Venetian history — the mark said to be stamped on houses confiscated from rebels.
- Casa Leoni
On the corner of Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini (a Venetian square) and Calle della Chiesa (a Venetian street), at no. 2180, Casa Leoni links two ages in the literal sense: its pointed-arch mullioned windows date from the 15th century, while other parts of the house are Renaissance work from the 16th century.
- Church of Santa Maria Mater Domini
Set back on the Calle della Chiesa, a step from the medieval campo that bears its name, Santa Maria Mater Domini does not face the campo but the side calle.
- Ponte del Cristo o del Tintor
The Ponte del Cristo o del Tintor crosses the rio de la Pergola in Santa Croce — the small canal that descends from here to flow into the Grand Canal near Ca’ Pesaro — between the Campiello dello Spezier and the Calle de la Chiesa that leads to Santa Maria Mater Domini.
- Palazzo Mocenigo (Museum)
At San Stae, a stone’s throw from the Grand Canal, stands a palace that was for centuries the home of the San Stae branch of the Mocenigo — the family that gave Venice no fewer than seven doges.
- 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).
- Palazzo Pesaro (Gallery of Modern Art)
On the Grand Canal, opposite San Stae, Palazzo Pesaro — Ca’ Pesaro — is the last and most powerful creature of Baldassare Longhena: a colossal mass commissioned by the procurator Leonardo Pesaro, who had received the charge in the will of his uncle Doge Giovanni, with the injunction to ’increase its beauty and grandeur’.
- Palazzo Giovanelli (formerly Foscarini)
Beside the church of San Stae, on the right bank of the Grand Canal, Palazzo Foscarini Giovanelli is one of the most inhabited houses in the history of Venice: jewel merchants, Florentine printers, a doge, a king of Denmark and even Mozart lived or celebrated here.
- Church of San Stae
Facing scenically onto the Grand Canal, on one of the few campi (squares) in Venice that slope right down to touch the water, the church of San Stae — Sant’Eustachio for the Venetians — is the manifesto of the Baroque looking to the canal.
- La Scuola dei Tiraoro e Battiloro
In the Campo di San Stae, lying alongside the church that mirrors itself in the Grand Canal, stands an elegant little building that worked the most precious metal in the world: the Scoletta dei Tiraoro e Battioro, seat of the guild that turned gold into threads for fabrics and into leaves thin as air for decorations — from the façade of the Ca’ d’Oro to the altarpieces.
- Salizzada San Stae
The salizzada runs straight towards the Grand Canal and closes into the perfect stage set of the facade of San Stae, the Baroque church that Domenico Rossi dressed in statues and marbles like a theatre on the water: it was paid for, by will, by Doge Alvise Mocenigo II, born in 1624 right in the palace of this salizzada.
- Palazzo Carminati
In Salizzada Carminati — a salizzada is one of the streets Venice paved first — a stone’s throw from the campo (square) of San Stae, this post-Palladian palazzo of the early 17th century was the house of the Carminati, wealthy merchants from Bergamo who in 1687 bought their admission to the Venetian patriciate — the classic parabola of a fortune from commerce converted into a coat of arms, the one two angels still hold in the lunette above the portal.
- Ponte Carminati
A stone bridge over the rio di San Boldo, at Santa Croce, with a double surname: they call it Carminati, from the patrician palace overlooking the rio, but also Colombo, from the family that bought a house here in 1695.
- Ponte e Fondamenta del Megio
A boat’s throw from the Grand Canal, the Ponte del Megio crosses the last stretch of the rio (small canal) of the same name where it flows into the rio de San Boldo.
- Casa Sanudo
On the Fondamenta del Megio, two steps from the Republic’s old granaries, a Renaissance 16th-century building keeps a Latin plaque: here on 4 April 1536 died Marin Sanudo, the greatest chronicler Venice ever had. The Sanudo claimed descent from the ancient Candiano doges; the house is 15th-century, with the pointed-arch portal and the worn coat of arms, and it seems he himself refaced the facade towards the bridge in 1506, around his wedding to Cecilia Priuli.
- Palazzo Priuli-Stazio
Between the calle del Megio and the rio of the same name, in the parish of San Giacomo dall’Orio, rises a palazzo that looks like a single block: six floors of stone and brick, already present on the famous 1500 bird’s-eye map of Venice.
- Fondaco del Megio
Beside the solemn arches of the Fondaco dei Turchi, this parallelepiped of bare brick is the plainest façade on the Grand Canal — and deliberately so: here wealth was not flaunted, bread was stockpiled.
- The Fondaco dei Turchi (Natural History Museum)
From the vaporetto (water bus), on the left bank of the Grand Canal, appears the most ’eastern’ image of Venice: the Fondaco dei Turchi, with its ground-level portico, upper loggias and battlements between two tower wings — the most complete type of Veneto-Byzantine house, although the façade we see is a 19th-century reconstruction on the ancient model.
- Calle del Capitello
A short calle of Santa Croce that runs behind the campo of San Zan Degolà, in one of the quietest and least frequented corners of the city.
- 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’.
- Corner Garden (site of Casa Bembo)
From the Grand Canal, at the mouth of the rio (a Venetian canal) di San Zan Degolà, you can see a corner of garden and a modern building.
- Riva di Biasio
It is the only vaporetto stop on the Grand Canal that bears the name not of a church or a monument, but of a butcher — and no ordinary butcher.
- Palazzo Marcello-Priuli-Toderini
On Riva di Biasio, where the Cannaregio Canal opens into the Grand Canal, Palazzo Marcello Toderini is a small 17th-century palace with an unusual design: a single piano nobile, with a central serliana flanked by round-arched single windows set within a trabeated frame.
- Palazzo Donà
On the Riva di Biasio, in the stretch of Grand Canal in the Santa Croce district opposite Palazzo Flangini and the church of San Geremia, stretches the 17th-century façade of Palazzo Donà Balbi.
- Calle del Pistor
A calle of the sestiere of Santa Croce that connects the Riva di Biasio, on the Grand Canal, with the interior of the sestiere in the direction of San Zan Degola.
- Lista Vecchia dei Bari
In this calle of the sestiere of Santa Croce, a stone’s throw from San Simeone Grande, hides a legal word of old Venice: ’liste’ were the streets adjoining a foreign ambassador’s palazzo, and they enjoyed immunity — here the constables could arrest no one, as in a sacred asylum.
- The Arch of Corte Pisani
In Lista Vecchia dei Bari, at Santa Croce, this brick threshold leads into the Corte Pisani.
- Campo Santo
The name already says it all, and says something that has almost vanished in Venice: this little open space in front of the facade of San Simeone Profeta was the cemetery of the district, the camposanto where the parish buried its dead for eight centuries and more.
- The Church of San Simeone Grande
In a leafy campiello facing the rio, among the silent canals behind the Riva di Biasio, the church of San Simeone Grande is one of the oldest in the sestiere: founded, the chronicles say, in 967 at the common expense of the Ghisi, Adoldi and Briosi families, it was rebuilt in stone after the fire of 1150.
- Ponte Bergami
On the Rio Marin, a rio is a small Venetian canal, a stone’s throw from the Grand Canal, the Ponte Bergami, or de la Bergama, is one of the most characteristic and picturesque bridges in Venice: an iron and stone structure linking the two fondamente (canalside walkways), which are lined with period buildings and grandiose palaces.
- Calle Lunga
Among the lanes of Santa Croce this calle (a narrow Venetian street) does a rare thing: it reaches all the way to the Grand Canal and looks out over the water at the foot of the Ponte degli Scalzi, one of the most scenic outlets onto the canal in the city.
- Fondamenta San Simeone Piccolo
This fondamenta (canalside walkway) is the first stretch of waterfront every traveller sees on leaving the station.
- Palazzo Foscari-Contarini
At the foot of the Ponte degli Scalzi, opposite the church of Santa Maria di Nazareth, Palazzo Foscari Contarini opens onto the Grand Canal with its singular U-shaped plan: two building bodies joined by a boundary wall that closes the inner courtyard towards the canal.
- Casa Adoldo (or Adoaldo)
Opposite the station, on the bank of the Grand Canal, almost everyone looks at the green dome of San Simeone Piccolo and few notice the house beside it. Yet Casa Adoldo is one of the most legible palazzi in Venice: rebuilt in 1520, it bears on its doors marble panels with Latin inscriptions — which for centuries no guidebook bothered to explain — supported by little figures of the apostles Simeon and Jude, which tell of Lucia Adoldo’s donation to the parish — a ’humble and tottering’ house, says the marble, bequeathed in 1345 — and the reconstruction commissioned by Vittore Spiera.
- Campiello della Comare
A hidden campiello of Santa Croce, where you do not pass by chance: you have to look for it behind Palazzo Gradenigo, between Calle Lunga and the Rio Marin.
- The Church of San Simeone Piccolo
For anyone arriving by train, this is Venice’s first landmark: the church of Saints Simon and Jude, known as San Simeon Piccolo, stands out on the Grand Canal opposite the station, with its Corinthian portico and great copper dome.
- Palazzo Diedo-Emo
On the Fondamenta (canalside walkway) di San Simeone Piccolo, a step before the Ponte della Croce and opposite the station (not to be confused with the other Palazzo Diedo in Santa Fosca), Palazzo Emo Diedo is for many travellers the first palace Venice shows them: a measured, neoclassical 18th-century façade, with the great three-light window crowned by a triangular pediment peeping out among Corinthian columns of colossal order.
- Ponte della Croce (della Zirada)
The Ponte della Croce, also called ’della Zirada’, crosses the rio de la Croce (a rio is a small canal) exactly where the little canal flows into the Grand Canal, between the Fondamenta dei Tolentini (a canalside walkway) and the greenery of the Papadopoli Gardens.
- Former Theatine Convent (IUAV)
Behind the bulk of the Tolentini basilica opens a convent that is a small masterpiece of 16th-century conventual architecture: Vincenzo Scamozzi designed it for the Theatine fathers, and the Theatines themselves completed it in 1602.
- The Basilica of San Nicolò da Tolentino (Tolentini)
The Theatines, an order founded in Rome in 1524 by Gaetano da Thiene and Giovanni Pietro Carafa, the future Pope Paul IV, came to Venice after fleeing the sack of Rome in 1527.
- Ponte dei Tolentini
The Ponte dei Tolentini crosses the rio of the same name (a Venetian canal) where it meets the rio della Croce, in Santa Croce, between Campo dei Tolentini (a Venetian square) and the Fondamenta Condulmer (a canalside walkway) leading to the Giardini Papadopoli.
- Giardino Papadopoli
Between Piazzale Roma and the Grand Canal lies Venice’s best-known public garden: 7,500 square metres of holm oaks, cypresses and cedars, all that remains of a 12,000-square-metre romantic park commissioned in 1834 by Teresa Mosconi — wife of Count Spiridione Papadopoli, owner of the city’s largest private bank — and designed by the theatre designer Francesco Bagnara.
- Palazzo Foresti
At number 210 on Fondamenta Condulmer, between the palazzo of the same name and the Hotel Papadopoli, this mid-16th-century palace — altered in the 18th century — looks on one side towards the rio dei Tolentini and the façade of the church of San Nicolò, and on the other towards the large garden that was once the wonder of Romantic Venice.
- Palazzo dei Condulmer
On the Fondamenta Condulmer, at the entrance to the Papadopoli Gardens and overlooking the rio dei Tolentini, rises a palazzo of the early 18th century that gave its name to the whole waterfront.
- Ponte dei Squartai
At the Tolentini, where the rio del Magazèn meets the Gaffaro and the sestiere of Dorsoduro gives way to that of Santa Croce, a red-brick bridge bears one of the most macabre names in Venetian toponymy: Ponte dei Squartai.
- Fondamenta del Magazen
The Fondamenta del Magazen runs alongside the rio (a small canal) of the same name — the arm of the Gaffaro that marks the border between Santa Croce and Dorsoduro — at the western edge of Santa Croce, between the Tre Ponti and the Tolentini, where the city meets Piazzale Roma.
- I Tre Ponti sul Rio Nuovo
Venice has hundreds of bridges, but only one carries its own number in its name: the Tre Ponti are a knot of footbridges at the exact point where three rii meet, a couple of steps from the asphalt of Piazzale Roma.
- Campazzo Tre Ponti
A corner square between Piazzale Roma and the sestiere (district) of Santa Croce, where working Venice meets the Venice that arrives.
- Piazzale Roma
Piazzale Roma is the only piece of Venice where wheels still beat on asphalt: the great open space at the end of the Ponte della Libertà, inaugurated on 25 April 1933 as the city’s motor-vehicle terminus, with the imposing Rationalist multi-storey car park — Miozzi’s reinforced concrete and its helical ramps immediately made the specialist press of half Europe — which until the 1950s was the largest covered car park on the continent.
- Campo Sant'Andrea
In Venice, campo means ‘square’, but here you can take the word literally: Campo Sant’Andrea really is a field, with grass and trees, tucked away just a short walk from the noise of Piazzale Roma.
- The Church of Sant'Andrea della Zirada
At the westernmost limit of Venice, squeezed between the garages of Piazzale Roma and the People Mover track, survives one of the city’s most beautiful Gothic facades: Sant’Andrea della Zirada, founded in 1329 as a hospice for poor women commissioned by four Venetian noblewomen.
- Fondamenta Santa Chiara
It is the bank where Venice ends and the mainland begins: the Fondamenta Santa Chiara runs along the Grand Canal wrapping around Piazzale Roma, and the vaporetti (water buses) going up the canal make their last stop here.
- Chiesa del Nome di Gesù a Santa Chiara
Two steps from Piazzale Roma, protected by a high boundary wall, this is one of the very few Venetian churches built in the 19th century: a small neoclassical temple erected between 1815 and 1834 to a design by Giannantonio Selva, the architect of the Fenice, and completed by his pupil Antonio Diedo: the solemn consecration came on 12 October 1834, after twenty-four years of building works.
- 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.