The merchants of Venice

As early as the twelfth century there was a flourishing commercial district in the cluster of islands divided by a canal which we now call Venice. It developed on a site where the land was higher than elsewhere, affording protection against floods.

Three centuries later, this district - the Rialto - had become the financial nerve centre of the Venetian Republic. Its tightly woven urban fabric contained many state administrative offices. A public clock tolled the hours of finance and business.

In the night of 10 January 1514 fire swept through the Rialto, reducing much of it to ashes. It spread through the wooden warehouses packed with merchandise and destroyed immense amounts of public and private treasure. Rebuilding took almost twenty years.

By the mid-sixteenth century the Rialto was a busy dockland area. Trading activities, business premises, government buildings and banks were concentrated around the little church of San Giacomo (reputedly the oldest in Venice) and its adjacent square.

At the foot of a wooden bridge, the first to be built across the Grand Canal, were many offices. Just opposite the public scales, cells awaited those who tried to cheat on their taxes or flout the property laws. On the Riva del Vino and the Riva del Ferro (the Wine and Iron Quays), thronged with barges laden with wine, oil, iron, salt and flour, stood the Land Customs House, the Wine Toll House and various valuers' offices which, dark and poky though they were, were well situated to supervise water-borne traffic.

Not far away was the great flour warehouse set up in the thirteenth century and run by private officials on the state's behalf. There was a small portico beneath which sacks of oats and corn were unloaded. The Ruga degli Orefici (Goldsmiths' Street), which led to the Rialto bridge, contained jewellers' shops, as well as drapers' stalls in a long building known as the Drapperia. Merchants selling Tuscan cloth were based in the Rialto Nuovo square behind the Drapperia.

A number of magistrates' offices were also situated at the foot of the bridge. Beneath an open portico nobles and merchants transacted business, and magistrates regulated the mooring of boats and the sale of merchandise. The Camerlenghi di Comun, magistrates responsible for state funds, officiated in an adjoining building.

The square of San Giacomo was the hub of the Rialto and the place where international contracts were negotiated. On the ground floor of a nearby building were money-changers and, later, counters where contracts were drawn up. In the upper storeys vaulted rooms contained depositaries and the apartments of public inspectors known as Provveditori. In one nearby street, lined by the ironwork gratings of notaries' offices, were the headquarters of the marine insurance authorities. In another were furriers. Two more contained shops selling cheese, basketwork and rope.

On a vast quayside area built on piles over the Grand Canal were the herb market (Erbaria), the fruit market (Fruttaria) and other specialized emporia, and a mooring for members of the nobility. To spare the neighbourhood the smell of fish, the Pescharia (the fish market) was banished from San Giacomo square. The rest of the Rialto consisted of a few houses, warehouses and shops, tabernae where the many foreign merchants received hospitality and other inns frequented by prostitutes.

A few reminders of the Rialto's historic importance as a hub of trade between East and West still survive. The Stagiera pubblica (public scales) at the foot of the Rialto bridge and the Pietra del bando (a pink granite column where the decrees of the Republic were read out) on San Giacomo square are still used.

The architect commissioned to rebuild the district after the fire of 1514, Antonio Abbondi, known as Scarpagnino, made the Rialto a more homogeneous and less congested district, as we can see in his Old Buildings (Fabbriche Vecchie), formerly the headquarters of the superintendants of trade, navigation and supplies. The trend towards greater regularity in architecture and town planning culminated, around the middle of the sixteenth century, in Jacopo Sansovino's New Buildings (Fabbriche Nuove), which follow the curve of the Grand Canal.

The finishing touch to the integration of the trading centre into the city was made in 1587 when the decision was taken to rebuild the old wooden bridge in stone.

DONATELLA CALABI, of Italy, is a specialist in urban history.

COPYRIGHT 1996 UNESCO
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