The Bridge of Sighs (Italian: Ponte dei Sospiri) is the name of one
of the bridges in Venice across the Palace Canal - the Rio di Palazzo.
This covered bridge structure connects buildings located on different
banks of the canal approximately at the level of the third floor.
The Bridge of Sighs was built by Antonio Conti in 1602 and decorated
in the Baroque style. The bridge connects the building of the Doge's
Palace, where the courtroom was located, and the prison building. The
“sighs” from which this bridge takes its name are not the sighs of
lovers, but the sad sighs of the condemned, who, passing under guard
over this bridge, glanced at Venice for the last time.
The
Venetian Bridge of Sighs is mentioned in many literary works, in
particular, George Gordon Byron's lines from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(canto IV) are widely known.
The Bridge of Sighs is built in Istrian stone, Baroque style, and was
built in the early seventeenth century to a design by the architect
Antonio Contin, son of Bernardino Contin and grandson of Antonio Da
Ponte: the builder of the Rialto bridge, for order of doge Marino
Grimani, whose coat of arms is carved there.
This characteristic
bridge of Venice, located a short distance from Piazza San Marco,
crosses the Rio di Palazzo connecting, with a double passage, the Doge's
Palace to the New Prisons. It served as a passage for inmates from the
aforementioned prisons to the offices of the State Inquisitors to be
judged.
Known globally, it is photographed by tourists from all
over the world. It was given this name because tradition has it that, at
the time of the Serenissima, the prisoners, crossing it, sighed at the
prospect of seeing the outside world for the last time.
The name
of "Bridge of Sighs" is already attested at the end of the eighteenth
century.
Bridges of Sighs around the world
There are some
structures called the Bridge of Sighs in both Cambridge and Oxford,
England. The first belongs to the St. John's university college, the
second, which curiously recalls the Rialto bridge in a more significant
way, belongs to the Hertford college. Furthermore, in the district of
Barranco, in Lima (capital of Peru), one can admire a "puente de los
Suspiros", an emblematic point of the neighborhood and one of the most
romantic places in the city.
Even in New York there is a copy,
or, better said, a "modernized quotation", which serves as a link
between two buildings of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower
complex, a skyscraper openly inspired by the bell tower of San Marco.