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Top Attractions | Worth Noting
Castello, Venice’s largest sestiere (district), includes all of the land from east of Piazza San Marco to the city’s easternmost tip. Its name probably comes from a fortress that once stood on one of the eastern islands.
Not every well-off Venetian family could find a spot or afford to build a palazzo on the Grand Canal. Many that couldn’t instead settled in western Castello, taking advantage of its proximity to the Rialto and San Marco, and built the noble palazzos that today distinguish this area from the fishermen’s enclave in the more easterly streets of the sestiere.
There’s a lot to see here. The church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo is a major attraction, and Carpaccio’s paintings at the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni are among Venice’s most important treasures. San Francesco della Vigna, with a Palladio façade and Sansovino interior, certainly deserves a stop, as do the church San Zaccaria and the Querini-Stampalia museum.
Top Attractions
Arsenale.
Visible from the street, the Arsenale’s impressive Renaissance gateway, the Porta Magna (1460), was the first classical structure to be built in Venice. It is guarded by four lions—war booty of Francesco Morosini, who took the Peloponnese from the Turks in 1687. The 10-foot-tall lion on the left stood sentinel more than 2,000 years ago near Athens, and experts say its mysterious inscription is runic “graffiti” left by Viking mercenaries
hired to suppress 11th-century revolts in Piraeus. If you look at the winged lion above the doorway, you’ll notice that the Gospel at his paws is open, but lacks the customary Pax inscription; praying for peace perhaps seemed inappropriate above a factory that manufactured weapons. The interior is not regularly open to the public, since it belongs to the Italian Navy, but it opens for the Biennale and for Venice’s festival of traditional boats,
Mare Maggio ( www.maremaggio.it), held every May. If you’re here during those times, don’t miss the chance for a look inside; you can enter from the back via a northern-side walkway leading from the Ospedale vaporetto stop. | Campo dell’Arsenale | 30135 | Station: Vaporetto: Arsenale.
Fodor’s Choice |
Santi Giovanni e Paolo.
This massive Italian Gothic church of the Dominican order, commonly called San Zanipolo, was consecrated in 1430. Bartolomeo Bon’s portal, combining Gothic and classical elements, was added between 1458 and 1462, using columns salvaged from Torcello. The 15th-century stained-glass window near the side entrance is breathtaking for its brilliant colors and beautiful figures; it was made in Murano from drawings by Bartolomeo Vivarini and Gerolamo Mocetto (circa 1458–1531).
The second official church of the Republic after San Marco, San Zanipolo is the Venetian equivalent of London’s Westminster Abbey, with a great number of important people, including 25 doges, buried here. Artistic highlights include an early (1465) polyptych by Giovanni Bellini (right aisle, second altar) where the influence of Mantegna is still very evident, Alvise Vivarini’s Christ Carrying the Cross (sacristy), and Lorenzo Lotto’s Charity of St. Antonino (right transept). Don’t miss the Cappella del Rosario (Rosary Chapel), off the left transept, built in the 16th century to commemorate the 1571 victory of Lepanto, in western Greece, when Venice led a combined European fleet to defeat the Turkish Navy. The chapel was devastated by a fire in 1867 and restored in the early years of the 20th century with works from other churches, among them the
sumptuous Veronese ceiling paintings. However quick your visit, don’t miss the Pietro Mocenigo tomb to the right of the main entrance, by Pietro Lombardo and his sons.
The most important sculpture associated with this church is in the surrounding campo—the magnificent 15th-century equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni by the Florentine Andrea Verrocchio. Also note the beautiful façade of the Scuola Grande di San Marco (now the municipal hospital), begun by Pietro Lombardo and completed after the turn of the 16th century by Mauro Codussi. | Campo dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo | 30122 | 041/5235913 | €3 | Mon.–Sat. 9:30–6, Sun. 1–6 | Station: Vaporetto: Fondamente Nove, Rialto.
Quick Bites: Didovich Pastry Shop. To satisfy your sweet tooth, head for Campo Santa Marina and the family-owned and -operated Didovich Pastry Shop. It’s a local favorite, especially for Carnevale-time fritelle (fried doughnuts). There is limited seating inside, but in the warmer months you can sit outside. | Campo Santa Marina, Castello 5909, Castello | 30122 | 041/5230017.
Un Mondo di Vino. Un Mondo di Vino, below Campo Santa Maria Nova on Calle San Canciano, is a friendly place to recharge with a ciccheto (snack) or two and some wine. It’s closed on Monday. | Salizzada San Cancian, Cannaregio 5984, Cannaregio | 30131 | 041/5211093 | Mon.
Worth Noting
Museo Storico Navale (Museum of Naval History).
The boat collection here includes scale models such as the doges’ ceremonial Bucintoro, and full-size boats such as Peggy Guggenheim’s private gondola complete with romantic felze (cabin). There’s a range of old galley and military pieces, and also a large collection of seashells. | Campo San Biagio,
Castello 2148 | 30122 | 041/2441399 | €1.55 | Weekdays 8:45–1:30, Sat. and days before holidays, 8:45–1 | Station: Vaporetto: Arsenale.
Let’s Get Lost
Getting around Venice presents some unusual problems: the city’s layout has few straight lines; house numbering seems nonsensical, referring to the sestiere, and not to the street itself; and the six sestieri of San Marco, Cannaregio, Castello, Dorsoduro, Santa Croce, and San Polo all duplicate each other’s street names. Since the sestiere carries the house number and forms part of the address, the street name itself frequently becomes irrelevant. In fact, unless a Venetian lives on a major thoroughfare, he or she may not know the street name at all.
The numerous vaporetto lines can also be bewildering, and often the only option for getting where you want to go is to walk. Yellow signs, posted on many busy corners, point toward the major landmarks—San Marco, Rialto, Accademia, and so forth—but don’t count on finding such markers once you’re deep into residential neighborhoods. Even buying a good map at a newsstand—the kind showing all street names and vaporetto routes—won’t necessarily keep you from getting lost.
Fortunately, as long as you maintain your patience and sense of adventure, getting lost in Venice can be a pleasure. For one thing, being lost is a sign that you’ve escaped the tourist throngs. And although you might not find the Titian masterpiece you’d set out to see, instead you could wind up coming across an ageless bacaro or a quirky shop that turns out to be the highlight of your afternoon. Opportunities for such serendipity abound. Keep in mind that the city is very self-contained: sooner or later, perhaps with the help of a patient resident, you’re bound to regain your bearings.
Querini-Stampalia.
The art collection at this late-16th-century palace includes Giovanni Bellini’s Presentation in the Temple and Sebastiano Ricci’s triptych Dawn, Afternoon, and Evening. Portraits of newlyweds Francesco Querini and Paola Priuli were left unfinished on the death of Giacomo Palma il Vecchio (1480–1528); note the groom’s hand and the bride’s dress. Original 18th-century furniture and stuccowork are a fitting background
for Pietro Longhi’s portraits. Nearly 70 works by Gabriele Bella (1730–99) capture scenes of Venetian street life; downstairs is a café. The entrance hall and the beautiful rear garden were designed by famous Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa during the 1950s. | Campo Santa Maria Formosa,
Castello 5252 | 30121 | 041/2711411 | www.querinistampalia.it | €10 | Tues.–Sun. 10–6 | Station: Vaporetto: San Zaccaria.
San Francesco della Vigna.
Although this church contains some interesting and beautiful paintings and sculptures, it’s the architecture that makes it worth the hike through a lively, middle-class, residential neighborhood. The Franciscan church was enlarged and rebuilt by Sansovino in 1534, giving it the first Renaissance interior in Venice; its proportions are said to reflect the mystic significance of the numbers three and seven dictated by Renaissance neo-Platonic numerology. The soaring, but
harmonious façade was added in 1562 by Palladio. The church represents, therefore, a unique combination of the work of the two great stars of Veneto 16th-century architecture. As you enter, a late Giovanni Bellini Madonna with Saints is down some steps to the left, inside the Cappella Santa. In the Giustinian chapel to the left is Veronese’s first work in Venice, an altarpiece depicting the Virgin and Child with saints. In another, larger chapel,
on the left, are bas-reliefs by Pietro and his son Tullio Lombardo. | Campo di San Francesco della Vigna | 30122 | 041/5206102 | Free | Daily 8–12:30 and 3–7 | Station: Vaporetto: Celestia.
San Zaccaria.
A striking Renaissance facade, with central and upper portions representing some of Mauro Codussi’s best work, is attached to this 14th-century Gothic church. The facade was completed in 1515, some years after Codussi’s death in 1504, and retains the proportions of the rest of the essentially Gothic structure. Giovanni Bellini’s celebrated altarpiece La Sacra Conversazione is easily recognizable in the left nave. Completed in 1505, when the
artist was 75, it shows Bellini’s ability to incorporate the esthetics of the High Renaissance into his work. It bears a closer resemblance to the contemporary works of Leonardo (it dates from approximately the same time as the Mona Lisa) than it does to much of Bellini’s early work. The Cappella di San Tarasio displays frescoes by Tuscan Renaissance artists Andrea del Castagno (1423–57) and Francesco da Faenza (circa
1400–51). Castagno’s frescoes (1442) are considered the earliest examples of Renaissance painting in Venice. The three outstanding Gothic polyptychs attributed to Antonio Vivarini earned it the nickname “Golden Chapel.” | Campo San Zaccaria,
4693 Castello | 30122 | 041/5221257 | Church free, chapels and crypt €1 | Mon.–Sat. 10–noon and 4–6 | Station: Vaporetto: San Zaccaria.
Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni.
Founded in 1451 by the Dalmatian community, this small scuola was, and still is, a social and cultural center for migrants from what is now Croatia. It contains one of Italy’s most beautiful rooms, harmoniously decorated between 1502 and 1507 by Vittore Carpaccio. Carpaccio generally painted legendary and religious figures against backgrounds of contemporary Venetian architecture, but here there is also perhaps one of the first instances of “Orientalism” in Western
painting. Note the turbans and exotic dress of those being baptized and converted, and even the imagined, arid Middle Eastern or North African landscape in the background of several of the paintings. Here, in a scuola for immigrants, Carpaccio focuses on “foreign” saints especially venerated in Dalmatia: Saints George, Tryphone, and Jerome. He combined keen empirical observation with fantasy, a sense of warm color, and late medieval realism. (Look
for the priests fleeing Saint Jerome’s lion, or the body parts in the dragon’s lair.) | Calle dei Furlani,
Castello 3259/A | 30122 | 041/5228828 | €5 | Tues.–Sun. 9–12, 3–6 | Station: Vaporetto: Arsenale, San Zaccaria.
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