Along the Zattere, opposite Palladio’s Redentore, stretches the long white façade of the former Ospedale degli Incurabili: founded in 1522 on the initiative of two noblewomen, Maria Malipiero and Marina Grimani, who gathered the first suffering women into a house, and organised by Gaetano da Thiene and Girolamo Miani to assist syphilis patients — the ’mal francese’ that the age considered incurable — it later became one of the four great Venetian Ospedali, those in which charity turned into music.