The Rialto Bridge

Why it matters

The Rialto Bridge is the oldest of the four bridges across the Grand Canal, and until the Ponte dell'Accademia was built in 1854 it was the only one. It joins the sestieri of San Marco and San Polo at the point where the city began: the islands of Rivoalto, the Rialto, where the doge moved his seat in the early ninth century and where the market has stood since 1097.

The stone bridge you cross was designed by Antonio da Ponte and built between 1588 and 1591. It is one broad arch carrying two covered ramps of shops that climb to a portico at the top. Its engineering was thought so daring that the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi predicted it would fall. It has stood for more than four centuries.

The bridges before it

The first crossing here was a pontoon bridge of boats, built in 1181 by Nicolò Barattieri and called the Ponte della Moneta after the mint that stood near its eastern end. As the Rialto market on the far bank grew, traffic over the floating bridge grew with it, and around 1255 it was replaced by a wooden bridge.

The wooden bridge had two inclined ramps meeting at a central section that could be raised to let tall ships through, and in the first half of the fifteenth century rows of shops were built along its sides, their rents going to the state treasury to pay for the bridge's upkeep. It was damaged in 1310 in the revolt of Bajamonte Tiepolo; in 1444 it collapsed under a crowd gathered to watch the bride of the Marquis of Ferrara pass; in 1524 it collapsed again.

A stone bridge was first proposed in 1503, and for more than eighty years projects came and went. The most famous architects of the age submitted designs, Jacopo Sansovino, Andrea Palladio and Vignola among them, and all proposed classical bridges of several arches. Palladio drew two versions, each remaking the whole Rialto area with a colonnaded square for trade at either end of the bridge, and Michelangelo was also considered as a designer. The many-arched designs were judged inappropriate to the site. When the competition was reopened in 1587, Antonio da Ponte won against Scamozzi, and his design was chosen on 9 June 1588 because it crossed the canal in a single arch.

What you actually see

Stand first on the Riva del Vin, the old wine quay at the San Polo foot, or on the Riva del Ferro opposite, and look at the bridge whole. The span rests on some twelve thousand elm piles driven into the mud. It is about forty-eight meters long and twenty-two wide, and its arch is some twenty-eight meters across at the base and about seven and a half meters high.

On the south face are relief figures of the Annunciation, the angel on the left, the dove of the Holy Spirit in the middle, the Virgin on the right, a reminder that Venice dated its founding to the feast of the Annunciation, 25 March 421. On the opposite face Saint Mark and Saint Theodore, the city's patrons, are carved in high relief. Inscriptions on the sides record that the bridge was built under Doge Pasquale Cicogna in 1591.

Climb the ramps between the shops, twenty-four of them in all, six to each side, each about three meters wide. At the top, under the portico, the views open both ways along the busiest stretch of the Grand Canal: south toward the curve by Ca' Foscari, north toward the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and the market.

How to visit

The bridge is free and always there, but it is also one of the most crowded places in Venice. The ramps and the top are packed from mid-morning to evening in season, so come early, or late, when the shops are shuttered and the canal is quiet.

The best views of the bridge are not from it but of it: from the Riva del Vin, from the landing stages on either bank, and from a water bus. Line 1 of the vaporetto passes under it on its slow run down the canal, and a traghetto crosses the canal close by at Santa Sofia (see getting around).

Combine it with the market on the San Polo side, which is liveliest in the morning, and the church of San Giacomo di Rialto beside it, by tradition the oldest in the city. From the San Marco foot, the Mercerie lead through shopping streets to Piazza San Marco, the route the homepage walk follows.

Myths and honest notes

The doubters became a joke in stone. Legend says that while the bridge was slow in building, people swore it would never stand, one man declaring that if it did a nail would grow on a very private part of him, and one woman something as rude about herself. Two capitals carved on the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, easy to see from the ramp, are said to show them, a sign that the Republic heard every rumor.

The bridge has been restored several times, in 1824 and 1852 among others, and the most thorough restoration since it was built ran from 2015 to 2019, paid for by a single private sponsor. The name Shylock's bridge comes from Browning, after Shylock's line to Antonio in The Merchant of Venice about the Rialto.