Rialto Bridge

Put your hand on the parapet. The stone is smooth and pale, worn soft by centuries of palms and elbows. Below you, the Grand Canal moves in a slow green sweep. Vaporetto engines throb and fade. A gondolier calls out before the bend. Somewhere behind you, a shopkeeper pulls up a metal shutter with a rattle. This is the Rialto Bridge, and for most of Venice's history it was the only way to cross this canal on foot.

The name is older than the bridge. Rialto comes from Rivo Alto, which means the high bank. This cluster of islands sat a little higher than the surrounding marsh, so early settlers built here first. Over time it became the commercial heart of the city. Merchants, bankers and traders gathered on these banks. If Saint Mark's Square was where Venice showed its power, the Rialto was where Venice made its money.

The first crossing here was not stone at all. In the twelfth century, Venetians laid a bridge of boats across the water, a floating walkway tied side by side. Later came wooden bridges. These were practical, but fragile. One was damaged during an armed revolt in 1310, when rebels tried to overthrow the government and burned part of it as they retreated. The city repaired it and carried on.

Here is a story most visitors never hear. In 1444, a large crowd gathered on the wooden bridge to watch a wedding procession of boats pass below. The structure could not hold their weight. It collapsed into the canal. The bridge was rebuilt in wood again, this time with a movable central section. That section could be raised to let tall-masted ships sail through toward the inner city.

You can still see that wooden bridge today, though not here. A painter named Vittore Carpaccio included it in a large canvas from the late fifteenth century. It shows the bridge crowded with people, its drawbridge in the middle, and the canal full of gondolas. The painting hangs in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, across the city. It is one of the best records of what this spot looked like before the stone arch.

By the sixteenth century, Venice wanted something permanent. The government held a competition, and some of the most respected architects of the age sent proposals. Andrea Palladio, whose villas and churches shaped Western architecture, submitted a design. So did others with famous names. In the end, the commission went to a man named Antonio da Ponte. Fittingly, his surname means "of the bridge". Construction ran from 1588 and finished in 1591.

Da Ponte's design was bold. He chose a single stone arch to span the whole canal, with no supports standing in the water. Critics at the time predicted it would fall down. The ground here is soft lagoon mud, not bedrock. To hold the weight, builders drove thousands of wooden piles deep into the mud on each bank. Without air, the wood does not rot easily. More than four centuries later, the bridge is still standing.

Look at the material under your feet and around you. It is Istrian stone, a dense white limestone brought across the Adriatic from the coast of what is now Croatia and Slovenia. Venetians used it everywhere because it resists salt water well. In bright sun it looks almost white. On a grey morning it turns the colour of old ivory. Notice how the steps are shallow and wide, built for crowds carrying goods.

Now notice the shape of the bridge itself. It is not one walkway but three. Two narrow paths run along the outer edges, beside the balustrades. The wide central path runs between two rows of small shops, set under a roofline of arches. The shops were part of the plan from the start. Their rents helped pay for the bridge. Today they sell jewellery, glass, leather and souvenirs.

Before you go, find the carvings on the outside of the arch. On the faces of the bridge, above the water, there are relief sculptures of the Annunciation. The Angel Gabriel is on one side of the arch. The Virgin Mary is on the other, receiving his message. You will also find figures of Saint Mark and Saint Theodore, the two patron saints of Venice. Most people walk straight over them without looking down.

For centuries, this was the only bridge across the Grand Canal. A second crossing, at the Accademia, did not arrive until the nineteenth century. So every journey on foot between the two halves of the city came through here. Today the bridge is crowded from morning to night. In the 2010s it went through a major cleaning and restoration, funded by a private sponsor, which removed years of grime from the stone.

The neighbourhood around the bridge still carries its trading past. On the San Polo side, the Rialto Market sells fruit, vegetables and fresh fish from the lagoon, under old stone arcades. The banks along the canal have names like Riva del Vin and Riva del Ferro, the bank of wine and the bank of iron. Those were the goods once unloaded here. Nearby stands the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, once the warehouse of German merchants.

Stand still for a moment at the top of the arch. Look down the canal in both directions. The palaces line the water, their foundations stained green where the tide rises and falls. Boats pass under you every few seconds. As you walk down the steps, listen to the change in sound. The open echo of the canal gives way to narrow streets, voices, and the clatter of carts. You are crossing the way Venetians always have.