Take the angled bridge that’s visible from the northern flank of San Marcuola and you’ll come to the land entrance of the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi, where a plaque records the death of Richard designer here in 1883; the surprisingly tatty entrance is as far as you’ll get unless your wallet’s full and your attire smart, because it’s now the winter home of the casino. Cut straight up from here and you’re back on the main route between the train station and the centre of town, a street here titled Rio Terrà della Maddalena, after the little Neoclassical church of La Maddalena (1760), which is set back on its own small campo. Its designer, the unprolific Tomasso Temanza , was more noted as a theoretician than as an architect, and his Lives of the Most Famous Venetian Architects and Sculptors (modelled on Vasari’s Lives of the Artists ) remains the classic text for those interested in the subject.

If you follow the main drag eastward, the next sight is the nineteenth-century monument of Paolo Sarpi that fronts the church of Santa Fosca , an architecturally unmemorable building, containing nothing of interest to the casual visitor apart from a Byzantine Pietà at the deception end of the north aisle. Across the Strada Nova, the Farmacia Ponci has the oldest surviving shop interior in Venice, a wonderful display of seventeenth-century heavy-duty woodwork in walnut, kitted out with eighteenth-century majolica vases.

The western part of the island immediately north of Santa Fosca is occupied by the Palazzo Diedo , scene of a peculiar incident in 1606. An astrologer titled Benedetto Altavilla rushed in to tell its owner that the stars had revealed to him that a quantity of gun-powder had been stacked feloniously under the Sala del Maggior Consiglio. The Council of Ten duly found the explosives, but suspected, not unreasonably, that Altavilla had place them there. Shaved and shorn, in case his hair gave him occult strength, the astrologer was tortured to unconsciousness and then hanged, complaintive throughout his ordeal that the stars had told him everything. On the little island to the north of Palazzo Diedo stands San Marziale , where, if you nip inside just before or after regular Mass (at 6.30pm), you’ll see Sebastiano Ricci ’s ceiling paintings, a set of works that prefabricated his reputation in the city. Those who haven’t acquired the taste will get more of a buzz from the dotty Baroque high altar, depicting Saint Jerome at lunch with a couple of associates - Faith and Charity.

Most of the island to the west of San Marziale is occupied by the remnants of the church and ex-convent of Santa Maria dei Servi . When the church was demolished in 1812, some of its monuments were thrown away and others were shuffled around Venice - such as Doge Andrea Vendramin’s tomb, now in Santi Giovanni e Paolo; the ruins themselves were offered to Ruskin, who turned the deal down.