Venice Mercerie Site Features

Look for the relief of the old woman with a mortar above the Sottoportego del Nero Cappello, and the marked paving stone nearby said to show where Bajamonte Tiepolo's standard-bearer fell in 1310 -- two small, easy-to-miss reminders that this shopping street was once the stage for a failed coup against the Republic.

The Mercerie are not one street but a chain of five, running roughly north from beneath the Torre dell'Orologio to the foot of the Rialto Bridge: Merceria dell'Orologio, di San Zulian, del Capitello, di San Salvador and 2 Aprile, each named for the church or landmark it passes.

The route exists because of the two things at its ends. San Marco was the political and religious centre and Rialto the commercial one, and this is the shortest walkable line between them -- so it became the spine of the city, and its width, two to four metres for most of its length, has never been able to change.

The built form follows from that. Ground floors are given over almost entirely to shopfronts, upper floors to housing, and the street passes repeatedly under buildings through sottoporteghi rather than around them. There are no squares along it and almost no daylight at street level, which is why stepping out into Campo San Salvador partway along registers so strongly.

It remains the default route for residents crossing between the two districts, not only for visitors, which is what makes the congestion a daily problem rather than a seasonal one.