The Vivaldi walk contains a great variety of sights including significant churches, great art, local folklore and stories.  It is a ‘high payoff’ walk, offering many points of interest for the distance covered.

Start at the bridge over Rio dal Palazzo with St Mark’s behind you.  Straight after the bridge on the right is the Museo Diocesano d’Arte Sacra Sant’Apollonia, which houses a rich historical collection and hosts visiting exhibitions.  The cloister inside the museum is worth the visit.  It is hidden away in a busy part of the city behind St Mark’s Square and is a tranquil space away from the nearby chaos.  Sant Apollonia, which no longer exists, dated back to the 12th century.  The cloister is the only one of its kind in Venice, with the brick paving being a rare example of what was once common throughout Venice.  On the walls there is a collection of decorative fragments from Roman (1^st – 4^th century) and Byzantine/Venetian origin (5^th – 11^th century).

Carrying on and in the triangular shaped campo just beyond, we encounter the first of our many brushes with Antonio Vivaldi on this walk.  Antonio Vivaldi’s house is at number 4358 (POI #3).  He lived here from 1719-1730.  Just before entering Campo San Zaccaria, there is an interesting marble relief over a doorway just short of the campo.  Attributed to Bartolomeo Bon (1407-1464), the relief shows the Virgin & Child and John the Baptist.

The present church is known as the Chiesa Nuova.  Its ancient predecessor, the Chiesa Vecchia, is next door to the right. The original church was built by Doge Agnello Partecipazio (811-27) and dedicated to St Zacharias, father of St John the Baptist.  Its convent of Benedictine nuns is believed to have been founded at about the same time.  The Chiesa Nuova was built in a first stage of construction in 1444-65 by Antonio Gambello and completed between 1483-1504 by Mauro Coducci, then consecrated in 1543.  The elaborately carved doorway with its round arch was done in 1483 by Giovanni Buora. The arch is surmounted by a statue of St Zacharias done c.1580 by Alessandro Vittoria (Freely, 1994). See also ‘The Churches of Venice’.  The artwork inside is a must-see on this walk.  There are masterpieces by Vivarini, Palma il Giovane (several) and Tintoretto, but the absolute highlight is the Giovanni Bellini ‘Virgin and Child with Four Saints’, created when he was 74 years old.  Finally, there is the partially submerged crypt (in which eight Doges are buried), a reminder of the lagoon’s progress over the years (or the building’s subsidence!).

Leaving Campo San Zaccaria and continuing south, we reach the Riva degli Schiavoni.  With a left turn, we are met in a short distance with a cluster of points of interest.  For the literary types there is the house in which Henry James completed his book ‘Portrait of a Lady’ in 1881.  For those interested in impossible architecture, there is the leaning bell tower visible from the bridge just after Henry James’s (POI #8).  What follows these is another set of features in the Vivaldi story.

The Church of the Pieta is just after the bridge.  Vivaldi taught violin at the orphanages located here while he produced operas at the Teatro Sant’Angelo.  The church came later in 1745-1760 and is famous for its acoustic properties.  The façade was completed in 1906.  Next door at the Hotel Metropole is the ‘Wheel of the Innocents’ – a vestige of the portal into which orphans were placed, then turned for the nuns to receive inside.  Just down Calle de la Pieta is a sign warning parents not to leave their legitimate children at the orphanage (which had become a school of great renown for musical accomplishment under Vivaldi).  A little further on and level with the other side of the next bridge is the former home of Andrea Navagero – poet orator, botanist, and official historian of Venice (No. 4146).  The next phase of the journey takes us away from Riva degli Schiavoni, but we return to it at the end of this walk.

In just a few more steps we are in Campo Bandiera e Moro.  The parish church of San Giovanni in Bragora was founded by St Magnus in the seventh century.  After renovation by Giovanni Talonico in 827, it was rebuilt in 1178, and again in 1475 with the façade with a central arch and curving wings corresponding to the aisles – a Venetian Gothic motif that would inspire Mauro Codussi for both San Michele (on the island of the same name) and San Zaccaria.  San Giovanni in Bragora was restored in 1728.  The artwork in the church features three great yet lesser-known artists: Bartolomeo Vivarini (1432-1439), Cima de Conegliano (1459-1517) and Palma il Giovane (1550-1628).  Look for Conegliano’s ‘Baptism of Christ’ altarpiece with the stone frame (1492-94).

Many derivations have been suggested for the name ‘Bragora’, some of the more convincing being ‘agora’, from the Greek word for a public square, ‘brago’, meaning ‘mud’ in the Venetian dialect, or ‘gora’, a stagnant canal.  In 1417 Pietro Barbo, who was elected pope in 1464, taking the name of Paul, was born in this parish, in what is now Corta del Papa.  A plaque records that Vivaldi was born in a house on this campo on 4^th March 1675.

Continuing on to the north-west corner of the campo (which is where you exit) is a fourteenth-century palace, built by the Gritti, some of whom were living in this parish in the thirteenth century.  In 1580 Procuratore Alessandro Gritti was living here, and in 1591 it passed by marriage to a branch of the Morosini.  At the death of Tadio Morosini in 1744 without male heirs, it passed to his daughter Elisabetta, wife of Sebastiano Badoer.  It is now a hotel.  It has especially beautiful windows on its façade.  These were greatly admired by the visiting Englishman John Ruskin in his exhaustive works on the gothic architecture of Venice.

After a quick diversion into Sottoportego dei Preti for the love heart, resume your walk heading north along Salizada San Antonin, named for the church which is the next stop.  The original church was built in the early seventh century by the Badoer family, which had arrived from Malamocco. The present building dates from 1680, as may be seen from the inscription on the façade, and was erected by the parish priest Domenico David, with a design attributed to Baldassare Longhena. The mortal remains of St Sabas the abbot are preserved here, having been brought to the church in 979 during the dogeship of Orsoleo II.  Sant’Antonino was first a parish church and then a daughter church of San Giovanni in Bragora.  The campanile was struck by lightning in 1442.  It was later rebuilt by the parish priest Antonio Fusarini, who died in 1762.  The church was deconsecrated in 1982.

A few more twists and turns and we pass some good places to stop: bars and restaurants, depending on one’s tastes and time of day.  POI #25 is a pair of palazzos named Zorzi-Galeoni and Zorzi-Bon.  The furthest one (Zorzi-Bon) has a lovely five-arched window on the first floor with contrasting colours in the capitals.  After Al Giardinetto da Severino (POI #26) we turn back for our final leg of this walk.  Soon, there is quick diversion for our final brush with Vivaldi – the Church of San Giovanni Novo (POI #27 aka San Zaninovo).  This long-deconsecrated church was the place where Vivaldi said his first mass which by all reports was also his last as it was said to have exhausted him.  A career change to composer and musician seems to have restored his energy!  Built by the Trevisan family in 968 and renovated in the fifteenth century the church was consecrated in 1463.  According to Stringa, it was restored again in 1520 and finally completely rebuilt, thanks to the contributions of worshippers, in 1762.  The design was by Matteo Lucchesi, who intended to correct here the defects of Palladio’s Redentore basilica, but the facade was left incomplete.  It was a parish church until 1808, when it became a daughter church first of San Marco and then, from 1810, of San Zaccaria.

We are now on our final leg.  We pass by Vivaldi’s old house on the way through what should be the familiar triangular campo, with a quick left and right turn into Calle de le Rasse.  Past Birreria Forst (POI #28) we arrive at the Riva degli Schiavoni and the famed Hotel Danielli.

The older part of the hotel building is the Palazzo Bernardo-Dandolo, a Gothic structure founded in the 14^th century.  At the beginning of the 16^th century the French Ambassador lived there.  After several exchanges of hands, in 1822 the Bernardo sold the second floor of the building to Giuseppe dal Niel who opened the hotel there.  The remaining owners of the building were eventually bought out paving the way for the hotel we see today.  Charles Dickens made this his temporary residence in 1846.  John Ruskin and his wife stayed there in 1849-50.

This brings us to the end of this walk.  If you continue a few hundred metres along the Riva degli Schiavone (head away from St Mark’s square), you will arrive at the start of the Arsenale walk, another section of Castello.