The longest walk in the book opens with its shortest stretch.

This is the first section of the Ghetto Walk, Walk No. 17, in Cannaregio. It runs from a wooden bridge near Campo San Felice to Palazzo Dona on Rio Terà de la Maddalena, and it carries eleven marked points of interest between the two. A short distance, then, and a high payoff.

The walk as a whole is a leg-stretch. This part of it is not. Here you can afford to stand still.

Ponte de l’Ogio, the wooden bridge

From Campo San Felice, head northwest across Ponte Pasqualigo and continue for thirty-five metres until you reach Calle dei Fiori. Turn left and carry on for fifty-five metres.

The bridge in front of you is Ponte de l’Ogio, POI #1, and it is made of wood.

Many Venetian bridges were once wooden, and even stone bridges commonly lacked parapets. Railings and stone balustrades became widespread much later. Timber and open sides were the ordinary case here, not the picturesque exception.

It is a plain structure, and that is the point of it.

La Maddalena and its campo

Cross the bridge and follow the calle of the same name for forty metres, then turn left into Calle de le Colonete. In fifteen metres, turn right into Calle del Forno, just before a sotoportego. Follow it until you reach the southern side of the church of Santa Maddalena, POI #3, on Calle de la Scuola. Turn right, then left, and you are in Campo de la Maddalena.

The church is round. That alone makes it unusual here.

An oratory was founded on this site in 1222. After later reconstruction, the building was demolished in 1760, and the church you see was erected between 1763 and 1778. Its circular design is thought to have been drawn from the Salute, or perhaps from the classical Pantheon in Rome. The architect, Tommaso Temanza, is buried here. Above the door, the eye set within a triangle and circle is a Christian symbol of the Trinity.

In the centre of the campo stands a vera da pozzo of the Renaissance era, POI #4. Wellheads like this one were the practical centre of parish life, and they tend to survive long after the reason for them has gone.

Before leaving, look for No. 2143, Ca’ Magno. The doorway is what remains of a former Gothic palazzo.

The Spezeria all’Ercole d’Oro

Return along the side of the church, then go slightly left into Sotoportego de le Colone. After thirty-five metres, turn left onto Ponte Correr and continue into Calle Correr. The calle ends at Salizada San Fosca, which is also Strada Nova. Turn right there, and after twenty-five metres turn left into Campiello de la Chiesa.

Before you go on behind the church, there is a short detour worth making. At 2233A on Strada Nova is the Farmacia Santa Fosca, POI #5, also known as the Spezeria all’Ercole d’Oro.

It was established in 1650 and renovated in 1848, and the interior has kept its period character: walnut panelling and fittings, furniture, and sculpture of the Baroque era. It is still a working shop. What it sells has changed – the trade now is in luxury fragrances rather than remedies – but the room itself has been left to do what it has always done.

Palazzo Vendramin

From here the route makes a loop around the church and comes back to Campo Santa Fosca. Take Campiello de la Chiesa behind the church until you reach a bridge. Cross it, and Palazzo Vendramin stands in front of you, POI #6, with a fine central doorway.

This was the home of Gabriele Vendramin, a friend and patron of Titian, who painted the family portrait. Vendramin kept a collection of curios here. It has since been dispersed, but one item from it is well known: Jacopo Bellini’s sketchbook, now in the British Museum.

The collection is gone. The doorway it passed through is not.

Around the block by Fondamenta Diedo

Turn left onto Fondamenta de Ca’ Vendramin and continue for fifty-five metres, then turn right into Calle Zancani. Forty metres on, cross the bridge, and you arrive in Campo San Marziale.

The campo and its church hold enough to fill a separate note, and they will get one. Treat this as the top of the loop and turn for home.

Exit the campo at its western corner and take Fondamenta Moro. Turn left onto Fondamenta Grimani, then left again onto Fondamenta Diedo, which closes the block and brings you back to Ponte Santa Fosca.

The map marks POI #7 along this stretch, at Palazzo Diedo. The route passes it without commentary, which is its own kind of instruction: look, and keep walking.

Ponte Santa Fosca, a fighting bridge

Cross the bridge into the campo beyond. It looks like any other bridge on the route. It is POI #9, and it has a history of organised violence.

Ponte Santa Fosca was one of the city’s so-called ‘fighting bridges’, where rival factions staged battles. The roots of the rivalry reach back to the twelfth century, when the opposing groups were known as the Castellani and the Cannaruoli. In 1307 the Cannaruoli became known as the Nicolotti – mostly fishermen, set against the Castellani, mostly workers from the Arsenale. The fighting bridges became famous above all for their organised battles with fists.

The bridges of the day had no balustrades. Coming off second best was a wet business.

Gabriele Bella painted the scene here in the 1770s. The canvas now hangs in the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, over in Campo Santa Maria Formosa, where a whole room of his work offers much the same service: ordinary Venetian public life, recorded without ceremony.

Campo Santa Fosca: Sarpi, the church, Palazzo Correr

Standing in the campo, two things claim your attention: a prominent statue, POI #10, and the church of Santa Fosca, POI #11. The church is dedicated to Saint Fosca, martyred in the third century along with her nurse Maura.

The statue is of Paolo Sarpi, a member of the Servite Order and a figure the Republic held in high esteem. During the Venetian Interdict of 1606–07, Sarpi defended the Republic against papal claims to jurisdiction. Several attempts were made on his life. A scientist as well as a theologian and historian, he worked closely with Galileo and later helped connect him with the Venetian government. He was an early advocate for the separation of church and state.

Venice thought well of him. Rome did not.

Facing the church, look right, and you will see Palazzo Correr, POI #12.

A church stood on the Santa Fosca site after the tenth century, when the saint’s body arrived in Torcello. The church was completely rebuilt around 1679. After a later fire, it was restored and the present façade was begun in 1733, with the work completed in 1741 through the support of the Donà family. Inside are works by Domenico Tintoretto, Johann Carl Loth and Giuseppe Angeli. The bell tower is the finer feature: rebuilt in 1450 after the earlier one collapsed in a storm in 1410. Note the dome and the decorative Gothic pinnacles, which read best from Ponte Santa Fosca.

There is one more thing, and it is outside. At the back of the church, in Campiello de la Chiesa, stands a statue of an angel bearing a thurible, dated somewhere between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. You walked past it earlier, on the way to Palazzo Vendramin, without being told to look.

Rio Terà de la Maddalena and Palazzo Dona

Leave the campo to the west, turning right into Strada Nova, here called Salizada San Fosca. After Ponte San Antonio the street becomes Rio Terà de la Maddalena.

A rio terà is a canal that has been filled in and turned into a street. This one was formed around 1398, which makes it one of the earliest streets in the city. You are walking on water, in the loosest sense.

Beyond the bridge, the Maddalena appears again on your left, seen this time from the other side. Fifty metres further on, you pass Palazzo Dona, POI #13.

This section of the walk ends there.

Walking context

This article covers the opening section of Walk No. 17, the Ghetto Walk, in Cannaregio – the longest of the seventeen walks.

Nothing precedes it within the walk itself, which begins at Campo San Felice. If you are arriving from Walk No. 16, the Ca’ Doro Walk, you will already be close: that route ends at Palazzo Sagredo in Campo Santa Sofia, a short distance east along Strada Nova, and the book offers the Ghetto Walk as the natural continuation rather than a return to San Marco.

From Palazzo Dona, the route stays on the Rio Terà for a further 120 metres to Calle Colombina, where a short diversion reaches Volto Santo at POI #14, the old guild hall and hospice of the silk weavers who came from Lucca in 1309. After that comes the church of San Marcuola on the Grand Canal, then the Scuola del Santissimo Crocifisso, and then the Ghetto itself. The walk finishes far to the north, at the del Orto vaporetto stop beyond Madonna dell’Orto.

The full route can be followed on the Cannaregio walking map.

Practical visitor notes

Santa Maria Maddalena is rarely open. It does sometimes house exhibitions during the Biennale, which is the best chance of getting inside.

The Spezeria all’Ercole d’Oro is a retail shop, so the interior can be seen during trading hours. It is a working business rather than a museum, and the fragrances it sells are good ones. Buying something is the surest way of keeping a room like this in use.

The loop behind the church runs along working fondamente, where people live at ground level and boats are loaded early. Keep to a normal pace and leave the doorways clear.

Save Ponte Santa Fosca for the dome and pinnacles of the church, and give yourself more time on this stretch than its length suggests. Eleven points of interest in a few hundred metres is a slow walk, not a quick one.

Continue exploring

This is one section of a long route. The full Ghetto Walk, with all of its points of interest, is set out in 17 Walks in Venice.

Further along the same walk, the route reaches quieter northern water and Jacopo Tintoretto’s own parish. That stretch is covered in Tintoretto’s neighbourhood: Fondamenta dei Ormesini to Madonna dell’Orto.

For the walk that leads into this one, follow the Ca’ Doro Walk, Walk No. 16, which works its way through the same sestiere to Ca’ d’Oro, Santa Sofia and Palazzo Sagredo.

For more on filled-in canals, wellheads, and the fighting-bridge tradition that Ponte Santa Fosca belonged to, see The Fabric of Venice.

Image of Ponte de l’Ogio by Abxbay; image of Santa Maria Maddalena by Yair Haklai; image of Paolo Sarpi by Nino Barbieri. All on Wikimedia Commons.