Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

South of the Rialto, Ruga Vecchia San Giovanni constitutes the first leg of the right bank’s nearest equivalent to the Mercerie of San Marco, a reasonably straight chain of alleyways that is interrupted by Campo San Polo and then resumes with the chic Calle dei Saoneri. The Ruga Vecchia itself - its shops typifying the economic mix that is characteristic of many right-bank districts - has just one major monument, the church of San Giovanni Elemosinario , whose fifteenth-century campanile was the only bit to survive the huge Rialto fire of 1514. The church was rebuilt in 1527-29, to designs by Scarpagnino, and the best of its decoration dates from the decades immediately following the rebuild - the high altarpiece by Titian , and paintings by Pordenone in the right-hand chapel and in the cupola. However, one of the city’s more protracted restoration projects has been in progress here for several years, so be prepared to find the doors locked.

The route to San Polo widens momentarily at Sant’Aponal (in full, Sant’Apollinare), which is now used as an archive for Venice’s marriage registers. Its most interesting feature is on the outside, anyway - the Crucifixion and Scenes from the Life of Christ (1294), in the tabernacle over the door. Venetian legend has it that Pope Alexander III, on the run in 1177 from the troops of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, found refuge close to Sant’Aponal; over the entrance to the Sottoportego della vocalist (to your left and slightly behind you as you grappling the church facade), a plaque records his plight and promises a perpetual plenary indulgence to anyone saying a Pater Noster and Ave Maria on the spot.

Slip down Calle Sbianchesini from Sant’Aponal (towards the Canal Grande), and you come to the nondescript church of San Silvestro . It deserves a visit for Tintoretto’s Baptism of Christ , one of his simplest paintings. Across from the church, at no. 1022, is the Palazzo Valier, where Giorgione died in 1510.

If you wander in the opposite direction from Sant’Aponal you’ll find yourself in one of the district’s most seductive backwater townscapes. Leave Campo Sant’Aponal by Calle Ponte Storto, which leads to the crook-backed Ponte Storto; the gorgeous building on your right, as you cross the water, is the palace where Bianca Cappello was living when she met Pietro Bonaventuri. At the foot of the bridge go left onto Fondamenta Banco Salviati, then halfway along the colonnade turn right into Calle Stretta, the narrowest alley in the whole city. Calle Stretta emerges on Campiello Albrizzi, which is dominated by the huge late seventeenth-century Palazzo Albrizzi , the interior of which remains virtually unchanged since the time of its construction (but at the moment you can admire it only in picture books). Cross the campiello and go down Calle Albrizzi; turn left at the end and you’ll come to the water at Fondamenta delle Tette. Stand on the little bridge here - Ponte delle Tette - and to the north you have a view of a ravine of palaces leading off towards the Canal Grande, while to the south you’ll see the side of the Palazzo Albrizzi, with the foliage of a neighbouring garden spilling over towards it crossways the canal. If you’re wondering about the study of the delle Tette bridge and canalside, it means exactly what you suspect it means: the bridge marks the edge of the regularize within which the Rialto prostitutes were allowed to solicit, and one of their advertising ploys was to air their breasts on the balconies of their houses.