The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

san marco
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North of the Piazza
him out. Upon being allowed back on the job he belatedly took notice of conventional
wisdom, which argued that heavy vaults really weren’t a terrific idea in a
place where the land keeps shifting, and stuck a flat ceiling in its place, with a light
wooden vault attached, to keep up appearances. The library was finished in 1591,
two decades after Sansovino’s death.
Entering the library from the archeological museum (see p.74), you come straight
into the main hall, one of the most beautiful rooms in the city. Paintings by
Veronese, Tintoretto, Andrea Schiavone and others cover the walls and ceiling:
five of the Philosophers are by Tintoretto, while the pair that flank the entrance door,
and three of the ceiling medallions, are by Veronese, whose work in the library
earned him a gold chain from the procurators in charge of the project, acting on
Titian’s recommendation. Special exhibitions of precious items from the library,
such as the Grimani Breviary of 1500 or Fra’ Mauro’s 1459 map of the world, are
sometimes held here; at other times, reproductions are on show. Titian’s Allegory of
Wisdom occupies the central panel of the ceiling of the anteroom, which has been
restored to the appearance it had from the end of the sixteenth century, when the
Giovanni Grimani collection was first put on show here, until 1812, when Napoleon
turned the library into an annexe to the viceroy’s palace and shifted its contents
over to the Palazzo Ducale. Beyond lies the intended approach to the library, a
magnificent staircase encrusted with stucco work by Vittoria.
The Zecca and the Giardinetti Reali
Attached to the Libreria, with its main facade to the lagoon, is Sansovino’s first
major building in Venice, the Zecca or Mint. Constructed in stone and iron to
make it fireproof (most stonework in Venice is just skin-deep), it was built between
1537 and 1545 on the site occupied by the Mint since the thirteenth century, when
it was moved from a factory near the Rialto bridge. Some of the finance for the
project was raised on the Venetian colony of Cyprus, by selling the island’s slaves
their liberty. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the city’s prosperity was
such that the Venetian gold ducat was in use in every European exchange, and
Doge Tommaso Mocenigo could look forward to the day when the city would
be “the mistress of all the gold in Christendom”. In later years the ducat became
known as the zecchino, source of the word “sequin”. The rooms of the Mint are
now part of the library, but are not open to tourists.
Beyond the Zecca, and behind a barricade of postcard and toy gondola sellers, is
a small public garden – the Giardinetti Reali – created by Eugène Beauharnais on
the site of the state granaries as part of his improvement scheme for the Procuratie
Nuove. It’s the nearest place to the centre where you’ll find a bench and the shade
of a tree, but in summer it’s about as peaceful as a school playground. The sprucedup
building at the foot of the nearby bridge is the Casino da Caffè, another legacy
of the Napoleonic era, now the city’s main tourist office.
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North of the Piazza
From the Piazza the bulk of the pedestrian traffic flows north to the Rialto along
the Mercerie, the most aggressive shopping mall in Venice and the part of the city
which comes closest to being devoid of magic. Apart from the church of San Giuliano
– one of Venice’s lesser eccentricities – only the stately San Salvador provides
a diversion from the spotlights and price tags until you come to the Campo