Description
The Ponte degli Scalzi is one of the four bridges over the Grand Canal, right in front of Santa Lucia station: if you arrive by train, it is your first bridge in Venice. Its name comes from the nearby Scalzi church, but many Venetians simply call it the station bridge.
The thing to see is the bridge itself: a single arch of Istrian stone, white and smooth, designed by the engineer Eugenio Miozzi and opened in 1934. The stone blocks hold together without reinforced concrete or iron parts, and the parapet, hollow inside, hides the pipes.
Before it stood a cast-iron bridge, built in 1858 under the Austrians: only 4 meters high, it would not let boats with masts through, and after a few years it began to give way.
Miozzi cared so much about making his bridge look at home in Venice that in 1952 he had an engraving made in 18th-century style, showing the bridge in its place, as if it had always been there.
The thing to see is the bridge itself: a single arch of Istrian stone, white and smooth, designed by the engineer Eugenio Miozzi and opened in 1934. The stone blocks hold together without reinforced concrete or iron parts, and the parapet, hollow inside, hides the pipes.
Before it stood a cast-iron bridge, built in 1858 under the Austrians: only 4 meters high, it would not let boats with masts through, and after a few years it began to give way.
Miozzi cared so much about making his bridge look at home in Venice that in 1952 he had an engraving made in 18th-century style, showing the bridge in its place, as if it had always been there.