In Venice you cannot play bowls: there are no avenues, no pavements, not even a handkerchief of packed earth. And yet behind that wall lives one of the last bowls clubs of the historic centre. Inside are three covered lanes almost twenty-eight metres long, a bar with the trophies on proud display and a little fifty-seat grandstand: a world you would never suspect, a stone’s throw from Dorsoduro’s busiest campi (squares).