Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 19/07/2026 20:30:00

An enclosed limestone bridge spanning the Rio di Palazzo connecting the Doge's Palace to the New Prisons, built in 1600 to an Antonio Contino design in the baroque style. The bridge's English name, coined by Lord Byron in the nineteenth century, refers to the sighs of condemned prisoners who supposedly took a last look at Venice through its small stone-grilled windows before descending into their cells. The reality of Venetian justice was more prosaic, but the romantic legend has made this one of the world's most photographed bridges. The bridge is best viewed from the outside, either from the Ponte della Paglia on the Riva degli Schiavoni waterfront (perpetually crowded with photographers) or from the water on a gondola or vaporetto passing through the narrow Rio di Palazzo canal below. The enclosed passage with its white Istrian stone exterior and its two parallel corridors separated by a wall (one for prisoners going to trial, one for those returning to their cells) is accessible from inside the Doge's Palace museum circuit. The interior passage, traversed during the standard Doge's Palace visit and more intimately during the Secret Itineraries tour, provides glimpses through the stone grilles to the canal below and the Ponte della Paglia beyond. The bridge connects the palace's courtroom level directly to the prison cells, an arrangement that expressed the Republic's close binding of judicial and penal authority within a single architectural complex. Despite its modest size -- spanning barely ten metres -- the Bridge of Sighs has become one of Venice's most potent symbols, reproduced on countless postcards, prints, and souvenirs. A local tradition holds that couples who kiss beneath the bridge at sunset in a gondola will enjoy eternal love. The bridge is visible from the San Zaccaria vaporetto stop on the Riva degli Schiavoni.