In a hidden courtyard behind campo Manin, a Venetian square, Venice’s most celebrated outdoor staircase spirals upwards: a 26-metre cylindrical tower wrapped in a spiral of 80 steps — bovolo means ’snail’ in Venetian. The Contarinis of San Paternian commissioned it in 1499 to embellish a palace that was already late Gothic and looked onto the rio di San Luca, a Venetian canal; from then on, the family was nicknamed ’dal Bovolo’.