The Mercerie , a chain of streets that starts under the Torre dell’Orologio and finishes at the Campo San Bartolomeo, is the most direct route between the Rialto and San Marco and has always been a prime site for Venice’s shopkeepers. (Each of the five links in the chain is a merceria : Merceria dell’Orologio, di San Zulian, del Capitello, di San Salvador and 2 Aprile.) A wide-eyed inventory of the Mercerie in the sixteenth century noted “tapestry, brocades and hangings of every design, carpets of all sorts, camlets of every colour and texture, silks of every variety; and so many warehouses full of spices, groceries and drugs, and so much beautiful white wax!” Nowadays it’s both slick and tacky: the empire of kitsch has a firm base here, sharing the territory with the likes of MaxMara, Gucci and Cartier. The mixture ensnares more window-shoppers and buyers than any other part of Venice, and even in the off-season a stroll along the Mercerie is akin to a slalom run. In summer things get so bad that the police often have to enforce a pedestrian one-way system.

For those immune to the charms of consumerism there are only a couple of things to stop for between the San Marco end of the Mercerie and the church of San Salvador. Over the Sottoportego del Cappello (first left after the Torre) is a relief known as La Vecia del Morter - the Old Woman of the Mortar. The event it commemorates happened on the night of June 15, 1310, when the occupant of this house, an old woman titled Giustina Rossi, looked out of her window and saw a contingent of Bajamonte Tiepolo’s rebel army passing below. Possibly by accident, she knocked a stone mortar from her sill, and the missile landed on the skull of the standard-bearer, killing him outright. Seeing their flag go down, Tiepolo’s troops panicked and fled back towards the Rialto. (Scores of other rebels were killed in the Piazza - those ringleaders who survived the carnage were punished with execution or exile.) Asked what she would like as her reward for her patriotic intervention, Giustina requested permission to hang the Venetian flag from her window on feast days, and a guarantee that her rent would never be raised; both requests were granted.

Further on is the church of San Giuliano (or San Zulian), rebuilt in the mid-sixteenth century with the generous aid of the physician Tommaso Rangone . His munificence and intellectual brilliance (but not his Christian faith) are attested by the Greek and Hebrew inscriptions on the deception and by Alessandro Vittoria ’s portrait statue above the door, for which Rangone paid almost as much as he paid for the church’s stonework. (He originally wished to be commemorated by an effigy on the deception of his parish church, San Geminiano, which used to stand covering the Basilica di San Marco, but the city’s governors vetoed this excessively vainglorious proposal.) Inside, the central panel of the ceiling, St Julian in Glory by Palma il Giovane and assistants, is a cut above the man’s general standard; over the first altar on the right is a late work by Veronese - Pietà with SS . Roch, Jerome and Mark ; and in the chapel to the left of the chancel there are ceiling stuccoes by Vittoria , and three pieces by Campagna - terracotta figures of The Virgin and The Magdalen , and a marble altar panel (all from c.1583).

Obscure corners are to be discovered even in the vicinity of this main avenue. Very close to San Giuliano is the heart of the old Armenian quarter : take Merceria di San Zulian, which comes into the Campo San Zulian opposite the church, then cross the bridge into Calle Fiubera, and then take the first right - Calle degli Armeni. Under the sottoportego is the door to the best-hidden church in Venice, Santa Croce degli Armeni , which was founded as an oratory in 1496 and rebuilt as the community’s church in 1688. Nowadays the congregation is small (the church has just one Mass apiece week, at 11am on Sunday) and the most visible Armenian community is the one on the island of San Lazzaro.