Bridge sights in Venice
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Ponte di Calatrava
Modern Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s 2008 bridge over the Grand Canal between Santa Croce and Cannaregio has been called many things: a fish tail, a glass-and-steel fantasy, unnecessary, overdue, pleasingly streamlined and displeasingly wheelchair inaccessible. Its detractors point out that its €15 million costs are triple the original 2001 estimate, and engineers are still working to correct a 4cm tolerance to ensure its stability. A wheelchair lift is currently being installed, but at an estimated 16-minute round-trip plus wait times, the vaporetto may remain the faster way for disabled travellers to cross the canal.
Even among its supporters, there is…
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B
Ponte dell’Accademia
The wooden Ponte dell’Accademia was built in 1933 as a temporary replacement for an 1854 iron bridge but, with its high arch curved like a cat’s back, it remains a beloved landmark. Engineer Eugenio Miozzi moved on to bigger Fascist monuments such as the Lido Casino, but none has lasted like this elegant little footbridge – and recent structural improvements have preserved it for decades to come.
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C
Ponte di Rialto
An amazing feat of engineering in its day, Antonio da Ponte’s 1592 marble bridge was for centuries the only land link across the Grand Canal. The construction cost 250,000 gold ducats, a staggering sum that puts cost overruns for the new Calatrava bridge into perspective. Now that the Rialto is clogged with kiosks and foot-traffic jams, locals go out of their way to avoid it, or zip up the less scenic northern side of the bridge. The southern side faces San Marco, and when crowds of shutterbugs and tour groups clear out around sunset, it offers a romantic long view of gondolas pulling up to Grand Canal palazzi at striped moorings that look like floating barber poles.
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