Bridge of Sighs
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The Bridge of Sighs ( Italian: Ponte dei Sospiri ) is a building connecting bridge that connects the Doge's Palace and the Prigioni nuove , the new prison, in the Italian city of Venice and leads over the Rio di Palazzo, an approximately eight-meter-wide canal.
The narrow, eleven-meter-long, white limestone bridge was planned by Antonio Contin, a grandson of Antonio da Ponte , the builder of the Rialto Bridge . Construction began in 1600 and the bridge was completed in 1602/03. Contin had already worked on the Rialto Bridge. Those condemned by the Venetian courts for imprisonment or execution were taken from the Doge's Palace to the prison rooms via this bridge. Two paths, separated by a wall, lead across the bridge, preventing the detainees from looking at those to be brought before the court.
The "Bridge of Sighs" only got its name in the age of romanticism , in the imagination that the prisoners on their way to the prison could take a last look at the freedom of the lagoon with a sigh .
One has a very good view of the Bridge of Sighs from the Ponte della Paglia .
Many similar bridges were also named Bridge of Sighs after the Italian model . Better known among them are the at the University of Cambridge , at the University of Oxford and in Bremen.
The Bridge of Sighs ( Le pont des soupirs ) is also the name of an opera bouffon by Jacques Offenbach .
Coordinates: 45 ° 26 ′ 2.2 ″ N , 12 ° 20 ′ 27.2 ″ E
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Kurt Heller : Venice. Law, Culture and Life in the Republic 697–1797 . Böhlau Verlag , Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-205-99042-0 , p. 381 .