The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

san marco
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North of the Piazza
but the attribution seems to change with the seasons – it’s sometimes implausibly
labelled as a Carpaccio. Finally, the third altar of the left aisle, the altar of the
sausage-makers’ guild, was designed by Vittoria, who sculpted its figures of St
Roch and St Sebastian.
Next door to the church, the beautifully restored cloisters (attributed to Sansovino)
now house the Telecom Italia Future Centre (Tues–Sun 10am–6pm; free),
which is essentially a showcase for the cutting-edge technologies of the Italian
phone company.
Overlooking the campo is the home of the last of the major scuole to be established,
the Scuola di San Teodoro, which was founded in 1530; the facade was
designed in 1655 by Sardi, the architect responsible for the front of San Salvatore.
After several years as a cinema, it’s now a general-purpose exhibition hall, but the
shows hardly ever live up to their setting. The column in the centre of the campo
is a memorial to the 1848–49 revolt (see p.84), and was placed here on the fiftieth
anniversary of the insurrection.
Campo San Bartolomeo
Campo San Bartolomeo, terminus of the Mercerie, is at its best in the evening,
when it’s as packed as any bar in town – the hum of voices can be picked up from
a hundred metres away. To show off their new wardrobe the Venetians take themselves
off to the Piazza, but Campo San Bartolomeo is one of the favoured spots
to just meet friends and talk. The restoration of the church of San Bartolomeo
(Tues, Thurs & Sat 10am–noon) has at last been completed after many years, but
access is limited because it’s in effect become the property of the musicians who use
the building for their recitals, as is the case at the Pietà. For the foreseeable future,
anyway, its best paintings – organ panels by Sebastiano del Piombo – will remain
in the Accademia; its most famous picture, the altarpiece painted by Dürer in 1505
at the request of the German merchant Christopher Fugger, long ago migrated to
Prague. In the sixteenth century this area would have been swarming with men
like Dürer’s patron, as the base for the German traders was the Fondaco dei Tedeschi,
now the main post office, at the far end of the campo.
Campo San Luca and around
If the crush of San Bartolomeo is too much for you, you can retire to Campo
San Luca (past the front of San Salvatore and straight on), another open-air social
centre, where market traders set up their stalls from time to time. From Campo
San Luca, Calle Goldoni is a direct route back to the Piazza, via the Bacino Orseolo
– the city’s major gondola depot, and one of the few places where you can admire
the streamlining and balance of the boats without being hassled by their owners.
Calle dei Fuseri leads down to the smart Frezzeria (which takes its name from the
arrows – frecce – that were made and sold there), which takes you in one direction
to La Fenice and in the other to the area just west of the Piazza.
Unusually, the church of San Luca is not on the campo named after it, but
on a campiello some way off, down Salizzada San Luca, then right and then left.
Somewhere in the church is buried a writer whose name would have been known
to all Venetians in the mid-sixteenth century – Pietro Aretino. Nicknamed “The
Scourge of Princes”, Aretino milked a hefty income from the rulers of a dozen
states, who coughed up either in response to his flattery or out of terror at the
damage that his vicious tongue could do. So adept was he at juggling his various
sponsors that he managed simultaneously to be on the payroll of Emperor Charles
V and his enemy King Francis I of France. With Sansovino and Titian (who
painted his portrait several times and used him as a model for Pontius Pilate) he