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Hidden corners

The prohibitions of Sant'Andrea della Zirada

The church of Sant’Andrea della Zirada with the People Mover passing beside it: the 1640 slab is set into the wall along the Rio Terà
The church of Sant’Andrea della Zirada with the People Mover passing beside it: the 1640 slab is set into the wall along the Rio Terà Photo: Didier Descouens, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Camouflaged in the wall running alongside the church is one of Venice’s last ’laws in stone’: an edict carved in 1640 by the Esecutori contro la Biastemia, the magistracy created a century earlier by the Council of Ten to watch over offences against religion and public morality. Here the problem was less theological and more everyday: beneath the monastery’s windows, people were gambling.

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