Vibrant Venice: A Walk through Rialto and San Polo with Context

Venice’s landmark Rialto Bridge (Ponte di Rialto) once connected St Mark’s (San Marco), the political center, with the city’s commercial heart at Rialto, where according to legend, Venice was founded in the year 421. Join Dr Susan Steer, art historian and Context Travel expert, on a walking tour through some of the city’s oldest districts to learn about the people and events that shaped it.

The tour starts in Campo San Bartolomeo next to the statue of Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni, Venice’s famous comic playwright. From there, you’ll cross over Rialto Bridge, wind through Rialto and on through the lively San Polo District. Along the way, you’ll discover some of the city’s greatest art and architecture.

You’ll learn about Venice’s role as a powerful trading hub between Europe and the Middle East. As you stroll along the Grand Canal, lined with the magnificent statement homes of Venice’s ruling class, Susan will show you some of the best vantage points to admire the city’s most famous waterway.

You’ll discover centuries of architecture from little-known historic buildings to major monuments like the Scuola Grande and the Church of Saint Roch, and concluding at the magnificent Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Along the way, Susan will point out ancient markets, historic hostelries, and places where the city’s guilds once assembled. She’ll also share stories about artists and famous personalities from the past, and a few tidbits about what life is like today in this beloved neighborhood.

On this 75-minute Venice tour, you’ll have a chance to:

• Stroll through Rialto market
• Hear about the tiny Church of San Giovanni Elemosinario, destroyed in a fierce fire that threatened the city’s economic center
• Admire the view across the Grand Canal to the Ca’ d’Oro (House of Gold), once home to a grand merchant, and now a museum with a stellar collection of Italian art
• Discover why the first decade of the 1800s saw the closure of many of Venice’s churches, governmental institutions, charities, and guilds, with buildings stripped of their furnishings and treasures
• Take in Cantina Do Mori, the favorite watering hole of Giacomo Casanova, Venice’s most notorious man-about-town in the 1700s
• Find out why a five-hundred year old sculpture of a hunched man called il Gobbo di Rialto is set at the centre of Rialto
• Enjoy Campo San Polo, one of the largest open spaces in Venice, where bullruns took place before they were banned in the early 1800s
• Learn why the bubonic plague inspired the building of the impressive Scuola Grande di San Rocco
• See where Venice’s ancient documents are stored in an archive that spans a thousand years of history
• Admire the great Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, an unofficial pantheon of Venice, filled with great monuments and Renaissance art

By the end of this stroll through some of the best-loved parts of Venice, you’ll have a grasp of the Rialto’s significance and have learnt about life, past and present, in the neighborhood of San Polo. You’ll have met some of the historic figures who walked these streets and, as well as discovering the purposes of little-known historic buildings, you’ll be inspired to visit some of the city’s most magnificent monuments.