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Hidden corners

Layet's ringhiera houses

Paolo Monti, 1970: the Campazzo de l’Erba with Layet’s ringhiera houses - the superimposed iron balconies and the cast-iron spiral staircase, the steps descending to the rio
Paolo Monti, 1970: the Campazzo de l’Erba with Layet’s ringhiera houses - the superimposed iron balconies and the cast-iron spiral staircase, the steps descending to the rio Photo: Paolo Monti / BEIC, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

It looks like a piece of Milan transplanted to Castello. On the Campazzo de l’Erba, which until the 19th century was grassy ground where livestock is even said to have grazed, the inner facades run in long iron balconies one above the other, connected by a cast-iron spiral staircase: these are the ’case a ringhiera’, the classic type of Lombard working-class housing, here in a Venetian version - and almost a unicum in the city.

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