Venice's most famous crossing and the 1,000-year-old market beside it — go early, when the locals shop and the light is gold.
Explore → Get Early AccessThe oldest and grandest crossing of the Grand Canal — a single marble arch carrying two rows of shops, with the city's best canal-traffic view from its balustrades. Come early; by ten it's the busiest 48 meters in Venice.
Wooden bridges here collapsed repeatedly (once under a wedding crowd); the stone version won a 1580s competition against designs by Michelangelo and Palladio. Antonio da Ponte — 'Anthony of the Bridge,' truly — built it in three years.
Engineers predicted the single 28-meter arch on 12,000 wooden piles would fall. Four hundred thirty years of foot traffic later, it hasn't moved — and the surrounding Rialto market has been trading on the same spot for nearly a thousand years.
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