The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

though others identify it as Justice. It stands over the tip of Dorsoduro, the Punta
della Dogana, from where you’re treated to one of the city’s great panoramas.
The Záttere and western Dorsoduro
Known collectively as the Záttere, the sequence of waterfront pavements between
the Punta della Dogana and the Stazione Maríttima is now a popular place for a
stroll or an al fresco pizza, but was formerly the place where most of the bulky
goods coming into Venice were unloaded onto floating rafts called záttere. A fair
quantity of cargo was carted into the state-run and highly lucrative Magazzini
del Sale (Salt Warehouses), the vast low structure near the Punta della Dogana. In
the tenth century the Venetians established a regional monopoly in salt production
by destroying the rival town of Comacchio, near the Po delta; some 44,000
tons of salt, most of it made in salt pans near Chioggia, could be stored in this one
building, a stockpile that represented at its peak nearly ten percent of the state’s
income. Part of it is now a boathouse, and part is used as exhibition space during
the Biennale and occasionally at other times.
From the Gesuati to San Trovaso
There’s an appealing mix of architectural exteriors on the eastern reaches of the
Záttere: the fifteenth-century facade of Spirito Santo church, the Casa degli
Incurabili (once one of Venice’s four main hospitals, now used as a teaching space
by the Accademia), and the Veneto-Byzantine church of Sant’Agnese, begun in
the twelfth century but much remodelled since then. However, the first building
to break your stride for is the church of the Gesuati or Santa Maria del Rosario
(Mon–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 1–5pm; e2.50 or Chorus Pass).
Rebuilt in 1726–43, about half a century after the church was taken over from
the order of the Gesuati by the Dominicans, this was the first church designed by
Giorgio Massari, an architect whose work combines Rococo preciousness with
a more robust classicism – here his creation forms a sort of counterpoint to the
Redentore, over the water. He often worked with Giambattista Tiepolo, who
painted the first altarpiece on the right, The Virgin with SS. Catherine of Siena, Rose
and Agnes (c.1740), and the three magnificent ceiling panels of Scenes from the Life
of St Dominic (1737–39), which are seen to best effect in the afternoon, when the
natural light comes from the same direction as the artificial light in the paintings.
The third altar on this side of the church is adorned with a painting of SS. Vincent
Ferrer, Giacinto and Luigi Beltran by Tiepolo’s principal forerunner, Giambattista
Piazzetta; opposite, the first altar has Sebastiano Ricci’s Pius V with SS. Thomas
Aquinas and Peter Martyr (1739), completing the church’s array of Rococo propaganda
on behalf of the exalted figures of Dominican orthodoxy, followed by a
tragically intense Crucifixion by Tintoretto (c.1555) on the third altar.
Santa Maria della Visitazione (daily 8am–noon & 3–7pm), a couple of doors
down, has an attractive Lombardesque facade, but the only notable aspect of the
interior is its sixteenth-century ceiling, with panels painted by Umbrian artists. The
lion’s-mouth letter box to the right of the facade was for the use of residents with
complaints relating to health and sanitation; a complaint sent to the authorities in
1498 resulted in punishment for the tradesmen who had sold oil that was full of
“immonditie e sporchezi” (filth and dirt) – syphilitic patients had been immersed
in it as a cure.
dorsoduro The Záttere and western Dorsoduro
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