There is a kind of Venice that does not announce itself.

It waits beside a canal. It shows itself in a worn archway, a garden wall, a saint carved into stone, or the sudden noise of glasses from a corner bar. This short section of the Tolentino Walk moves through that Venice: not grand, not silent, but layered.

Here, near Rio Marin and San Simeone Profeta, Santa Croce gives up its details one at a time.

From Rio Marin to Palazzo Soranzo-Cappello

After rejoining the route near Calle Sechera, the walk passes Osteria alla Rivetta and a small side-world of courts and passages before reaching Fondamenta Rio Marin.

Cross Ponte Capello o Garzoti and turn left along Fondamenta del Rio Marin o dei Garzoti. After about thirty metres, look across the canal.

There stands Palazzo Soranzo-Cappello, POI #12.

The building is now the Venetian seat of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio, but the interest here is not only in the façade. Behind it lies a historic garden, long associated with Henry James’s The Aspern Papers: a decaying palazzo, a secluded garden, and the atmosphere of old Venice holding out against time.

Do not hurry this stretch. The canal does useful work here. It gives you distance. It lets the building sit back and be seen.

The garden behind the palazzo

The map marks POI #13 just behind Palazzo Soranzo-Cappello: the historic garden. It opens only occasionally, for special openings rather than regular hours.

Treat it as a possibility rather than a promise.

Even when the garden is not open, its presence matters. Venice often hides its green spaces behind walls, doors and water-front façades. From the street, you may only sense them: a tree above a wall, a gate, a change in light, a pocket of air behind stone.

That is enough. It changes how the palazzo reads. The building is not just a façade on Rio Marin. It has a second life behind it.

Palazzo Gradenigo across the canal

Continue along the fondamenta. In about seventy metres, the route reaches the edge of Campo Santo.

Across the canal, on the left, rises Palazzo Gradenigo, POI #16. It was built in the late 1600s, and the Gradenigos are said to have been among Venice’s original founding families.

It is an imposing building, but it does not need theatre. The canal, the bridge and the campo do the framing.

This is one of the pleasures of Santa Croce. A major palazzo can appear without crowd or ceremony. You come upon it while walking from one ordinary place to another.

San Simeone Profeta

At the end of Campo Santo stands the church of San Simeone Profeta, POI #17.

The church, also known as San Simeon Grande, has deep roots. It was founded in the tenth century – traditionally in 967 – and has been rebuilt and altered many times since. Its eighteenth-century changes are linked with Domenico Margutti and Giorgio Massari, while the façade you see today is better described as nineteenth-century, carrying its 1861 restoration. Note the Corinthian capitals on the two flanking columns.

Inside, the older city still presses through. The nave columns are thought to come from the thirteenth century. The statues of the apostles above them are later, from the nineteenth century. The church also contains a Last Supper by Jacopo Tintoretto and Presentation in the Temple, with donors, by Palma il Giovane.

The result is not a single age, neatly preserved. It is Venice as it often is: rebuilt, repaired, adjusted, and still standing.

Saint Ermolaus in the passage

Facing the church, move around its left side and enter Sottoportego de la Chiesa.

Here is POI #18: the relief of Saint Ermolaus.

His bones were brought to Venice and placed in San Simeone in 1205. The relief was created in 1382. It once stood beneath the church portico facing the campo, but was moved when that part of the structure was demolished.

John Ruskin noticed it in the nineteenth century. He praised the angels in the spandrels and the vine-leaf moulding above. You do not need Ruskin’s eye to appreciate it, but his comment helps. It tells you where to look.

Start with the angels. Then the frame. Then the way the stone has been made to survive in a passage where many walkers will pass without turning their heads.

Corte Pisani and the lions

Continue along Salizada de la Chiesa, turn right, then take Lista Vechia dei Bari to the left.

A few steps along, the atmosphere shifts. The route reaches a small intersection where Lista Vechia dei Bari meets Calle Larga dei Bari. In the early evening, this can become lively, with bacari and other places to stop close by.

Before the walk draws fully to its close, look for the entrance into Corte Pisani. The arch itself is mid-fourteenth century, but it incorporates older reused stonework. The details to watch for are the two walking lions on the jambs, dated by scholars to the eleventh or twelfth century, and, on the inner faces, two worn griffins.

They are not grand lions. They are remnants.

That is their strength. Venice often keeps its past this way: not in a museum case, but pressed into a doorway, reused, weathered, still doing work.

Walking context

This article covers the final section of Walk No. 7, the Tolentino Walk in Santa Croce.

The full walk begins around Salizada San Pantalon and passes through a quieter part of the sestiere before reaching this cluster around Rio Marin, Campo Santo and San Simeone Profeta. From Lista Vechia dei Bari, the route continues toward Trattoria-Pizzeria All’Anfora at POI #19, then turns left onto Calle Pugliese and moves toward the Grand Canal and the Riva de Biasio vaporetto stop.

The full route can be followed live in Google Maps – see the Santa Croce walking maps.

Practical visitor notes

This is a short section, but it rewards slow walking.

Look across canals before crossing bridges. Pause in the sottoportego beside San Simeone Profeta. Check the carved entrance to Corte Pisani before moving on to the final turn.

The corner of Lista Vechia dei Bari and Calle Larga dei Bari has several places to stop, and can grow lively in the early evening.

Continue exploring

This short Santa Croce slice is one part of the wider Tolentino Walk. Continue with the full route in 17 Walks in Venice, or use the next Santa Croce walk, the Turchi Walk, to follow the city further east through San Stae and its surrounding streets.

For more on how Venetian squares, churches, wells and neighbourhood life work together, see The Fabric of Venice.