Prigioni Nuove e Ponte dei Sospiri

The Bridge of Sighs connects the Doge's Palace to the New Prisons across the Rio di Palazzo. Built in white Istrian stone, its enclosed passage and prison complex preserve the architecture of Venetian justice.

Why it matters

The Doge's Palace housed the courts, while the New Prisons across the canal held people sentenced to detention. The Bridge of Sighs, built in 1614, linked the two buildings without a street crossing. Its name evokes the view of the lagoon and San Giorgio from the enclosed passage; the association with prisoners' last sight is a later tradition.

What to notice

From the Ponte della Paglia, the bridge appears as a closed white-stone shell spanning the canal, with the Grimani coat of arms above the central span. Inside, two parallel corridors connected the prisons with court and administrative rooms in the palace. A staircase linked the Pozzi at ground level with the Piombi under the palace roof. The prison cells were lined with overlapping larch planks, and the complex preserves objects such as the buglioli, lidded sanitation buckets.

Context and history

The Republic decided in the sixteenth century to build a purpose-made prison across the canal, intended to provide larger and lighter cells. Doge Marino Grimani commissioned the bridge, designed by Antonio Contin in the early seventeenth century. The prisons remained in use through the last centuries of the Republic. Today, the interior passage forms part of the Doge's Palace museum route.