Bridge Seventy-Three - Ponte Storto

Instead of continuing along the busy street we were on that leads to the Rialto, we swung left at the small Campo San Aponal and continued until we came to another one of those odd-angles Ponte Storto bridges.

The building the Ponte Storto connected on its opposite end had two romanesque busts and several reliefs, all adornments typical of the city, built into its facade. The facade didn't have the elegantly decayed look so prominent all over Venice, and therefore it's doubtful that its adornments were priceless leftover remnants from eras gone by. It look more like the types of faux Greek and Roman ornaments you buy at your local gardening and outoor decoration shop. But combined with the steel railing of the bridge and a neat first floor verandah overlooking the postcard scene, it was worth taking in for a few moments.

A sotoportego, translated literally into English, means "under porch" and refers to a covered walkway that in one of its manifestations forms part of a building running alongside a canal. We encountered one or two of them earlier in the day where they formed broad, airy thoroughfares between two buildings. Here, however, the Sotoportego del Banco Salviati which swallowed us after crossing the Ponte Storto looked completely different. Its entrance is a dark, gaping hole and inside it's quite damp and foreboding, which means it fits in rather well with most of the ancient, crumbling urban landscape we're exploring.

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