Description
The Ponte dell'Accademia is one of the four bridges across the Grand Canal, the southernmost. It is made of wood, with a single 48-meter span, and connects Campo San Vidal to the side of the Gallerie dell'Accademia, in Dorsoduro.
From the bridge you look onto the Grand Canal with its historic palaces on both banks. It is a convenient crossing between the San Marco and Dorsoduro districts, and it is a pedestrian-only bridge, in a city where water is the street. It measures 48 meters from one bank to the other and crosses the canal in a single span, with no piers in the water.
At one end, the church of San Vidal. At the other, the former church of Santa Maria della Carità, now home to the Gallerie dell'Accademia, the museum that gives the bridge its name.
The wood now covers a steel supporting structure, rebuilt between 1984 and 1986. The bridge was restored again between 2017 and 2018.
It was meant to be a temporary bridge, built in 37 days in 1933 while waiting for the real one in stone. The stone bridge never came, and the wooden one, in a way, is still there on the Grand Canal.
For centuries in Venice there had been only one way to cross the canal on foot: the Rialto Bridge. Then, under the Austrians, the city decided that two more were needed, one at the station and one here.
In 1854 the English engineer Alfred Neville built an iron bridge, with a toll, the Ponte della Carità. The Venetians did not like it at all: too industrial, and too low for boats.
In 1933 Eugenio Miozzi replaced it with a great wooden arch, then the largest wooden arch bridge in Europe. The stone design by Torres and Bisazza, winner of the competition, stayed in the drawer: the temporary had become permanent.
From the bridge you look onto the Grand Canal with its historic palaces on both banks. It is a convenient crossing between the San Marco and Dorsoduro districts, and it is a pedestrian-only bridge, in a city where water is the street. It measures 48 meters from one bank to the other and crosses the canal in a single span, with no piers in the water.
At one end, the church of San Vidal. At the other, the former church of Santa Maria della Carità, now home to the Gallerie dell'Accademia, the museum that gives the bridge its name.
The wood now covers a steel supporting structure, rebuilt between 1984 and 1986. The bridge was restored again between 2017 and 2018.
It was meant to be a temporary bridge, built in 37 days in 1933 while waiting for the real one in stone. The stone bridge never came, and the wooden one, in a way, is still there on the Grand Canal.
For centuries in Venice there had been only one way to cross the canal on foot: the Rialto Bridge. Then, under the Austrians, the city decided that two more were needed, one at the station and one here.
In 1854 the English engineer Alfred Neville built an iron bridge, with a toll, the Ponte della Carità. The Venetians did not like it at all: too industrial, and too low for boats.
In 1933 Eugenio Miozzi replaced it with a great wooden arch, then the largest wooden arch bridge in Europe. The stone design by Torres and Bisazza, winner of the competition, stayed in the drawer: the temporary had become permanent.