The center of Campo San Provolo holds a white marble vera da pozzo, a circular wellhead carved with intricate acanthus leaves and lion heads. It sits where a fourteenth-century church once stood, demolished in eighteen fourteen to make…
Cisterns and Stone Wellheads
We will walk through historic neighborhood squares to find the intricate stone wellheads and underground cisterns that provided Venice with freshwater for centuries. This route highlights both the spectacular artistry of the stone carvers and the ingenious engineering required to survive in a saltwater lagoon.
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1. Campo San Provolo (vera da Pozzo)
2. Pozzo Santa Maria Formosa
The Pozzo Santa Maria Formosa sits in the center of the square, an ornate wellhead carved from Istrian stone. It features a circular base adorned with relief sculptures of winged cherub heads and elaborate floral garlands. When the city…
3. Campo Santa Marina
Campo Santa Marina serves as a rare, quiet pocket in the dense map of Venice, distinguished by the weathered marble wellhead at its center. This square once held the Church of Santa Marina, which served as a focal point for the surrounding…
4. Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo
The brick facade of the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo remains jagged and unfinished, a massive display of bare masonry contrasting with the polished marble of the nearby Scuola Grande. Dominicans began the structure in the thirteenth…
5. Campiello dei Miracoli
The church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli defines this square with its skin of multicolored marble. Pietro Lombardo and his sons wrapped the building in slabs of serpentine and white marble in the fourteen eighties to house a painting of the…
6. Campo dei Gesuiti
The Church of Santa Maria Assunta commands the Campo dei Gesuiti with a facade covered in an intricate web of carved green and white marble. The Jesuits built this structure in the early eighteenth century, replacing a much older church…
7. Campo dei Mori
The Campo dei Mori holds three stone figures embedded into the walls of the surrounding houses, their eyes carved with a distinct, weary blankness. These carvings represent the Rioba, Afani, and Sandi brothers, wealthy merchants from the…