Rialto Bridge

The chronicles record that the first crossing of the Grand Canal was a bridge of boats. A bridge built by Nicolò Barattieri, given in one account as a pontoon bridge of 1181 and in another as a true structure on wooden piles raised in the second half of the twelfth century, under Doge Sebastiano Ziani or Doge Orio Mastropiero, took the name Ponte della Moneta, presumably from the mint that stood near its eastern end. The Chronicon of Andrea Dandolo dates the work instead to 1264, in the dogeship of Renier Zen, who held office from 1252 to 1268.

The growth and importance of the Rialto market on the eastern bank increased the traffic crossing the floating bridge, and around the middle of the thirteenth century it was replaced by a timber structure. This had two sloping ramps meeting at a movable central section that could be raised to let tall ships pass, and the close association with the market eventually gave the crossing its name, the Ponte di Rialto. During the first half of the fifteenth century two rows of shops were built along the sides of the bridge; the rents, collected by the State Treasury, brought in an income that helped to maintain it.

Maintenance was vital for a bridge of timber. In 1310 it was damaged, partly burnt, in the revolt led by Bajamonte Tiepolo. In 1444 it collapsed under the weight of the crowd gathered to watch the procession for the marriage of the Marquis of Ferrara.

The idea of rebuilding in stone was first put forward in 1503, and several projects were weighed over the following decades; a first scheme was drawn up in 1514 by Fra Giovanni Giocondo for the renewal of the Rialto market. The timber bridge collapsed again in 1524.

In 1551 the Venetian authorities called for proposals for the renewal of the bridge, and a commission of three provveditori over the bridge and the buildings of Rialto was appointed, made up of Antonio Cappello, Tommaso Contarini and Vettor Grimani. Further designs were submitted from 1554 by the most celebrated architects of the day, among them Jacopo Sansovino, Andrea Palladio and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, but all of them took a Classical approach with several arches, which was judged inappropriate to the site. Palladio offered two proposals, each of which would have reordered the whole Rialto district with commercial fora at the two ends of the bridge. Michelangelo was also considered as a designer.

Only late in the sixteenth century did Doge Pasquale Cicogna open a formal competition. It was put out again in 1587, and among those who entered were Vincenzo Scamozzi and Antonio da Ponte. Da Ponte prevailed, and his design was chosen on 9 June 1588 because he proposed a single arch. Construction began that year. The engineering was thought so audacious that Scamozzi predicted the bridge would one day fall.

The work was completed in 1591 with the help of the architects Antonio and Tommaso Contin, from Besso, now a quarter of Lugano, who were Da Ponte's nephews, being the sons of his son-in-law Bernardino Contin. The bridge rests on a foundation of twelve thousand elm piles and a raft of larch planking carrying a single span. Twenty-four shops stand on its two ramps, six to a side. Plaques set on the flanks by the approach ramps record that the bridge was built under Doge Pasquale Cicogna in the year of Our Lord 1591, one thousand one hundred and seventy years after the founding of the city.

An Annunciation carved on the south side by Antonio Rubini, a pupil of Alessandro Vittoria, marks Venice's devotion to the Virgin and the legendary date of the city's foundation, 25 March 421, the feast of the Annunciation; on the opposite face Tiziano Aspetti carved the city's protectors, Saint Mark and Saint Theodore.

Several legends grew up around the building of the new bridge. One holds that, with the work going slowly, many insisted a stone bridge on that scale could not stand, and that a man and a woman each swore an impossible bodily forfeit if it were ever finished. Two carved capitals on the facade of the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi are said to illustrate those rumours; by them the government of the Republic meant to show that it had long ears and that no gossip went unheard.

Robert Browning called it Shylock's bridge in his poem A Toccata of Galuppi's, likely because Shylock speaks of the place to Antonio in Act I, Scene III of The Merchant of Venice: "Many a time and oft, In the Rialto you have rated me". Until the Ponte dell'Accademia was built in 1854 it was, for two and a half centuries, the only bridge across the Grand Canal; it remains the oldest of the four that now cross it, connecting the sestieri of San Marco and San Polo.

The bridge has been repaired several times over the centuries. Among the more important interventions were that of 1824, when the upper arches were put in order, and that of 1852, when the facings and the marble parts of the stairways were replaced. A restoration begun in 2015 and finished in 2019 was funded entirely by a single businessman at a cost of five million euros, and covered the whole structure with consolidation work, the cleaning of the marble and the renewal of the services beneath. It was the first complete restoration the bridge had received since its construction.