Stretching east from San Marco, this broad waterfront avenue is one of the world’s great promenades. Schiavoni (literally ‘Slavs’) refers to the people from Dalmatia (the coastal region of present-day Croatia, which once made up a substantial chunk of the Venetian republic) who settled in this part of the city in medieval times.
For centuries, vessels would dock and disembark here, the waterfront a Babel of languages, as traders, dignitaries and sailors arrived from ports around the Mediterranean and beyond. Now it's liberally dotted with market stalls selling souvenir T-shirts, aprons printed with Michelangelo's David and mass-produced masks to visitors from even further afield.
