Campo San Luca

History

Tradition — recorded by the Venetian chronicler Cappellari, though its precision cannot be checked — credits the church of San Luca to Ottone Dandolo, son of a Domenico Dandolo who lived around the year 1000; the same family tradition also credits Ottone with the first Rialto Bridge and a residence of his own nearby. What is better documented is that in 1442 Fantino Dandolo increased the church’s revenues and assigned adjoining houses for a phase of rebuilding, and that the church underwent a further major reconstruction in 1581. In the nineteenth century its front suddenly collapsed; it was repaired and modernised under the parish priest Don Giuseppe Lazzari.

The campo itself once had its own theatre, the Teatro Vendramin a San Luca, which operated from 1622 to 1833 on the site now partly occupied by the Fenice’s rival stages of the day; the name survives in the nearby Corte del Teatro.

At the centre of the square stands a stone flagpole base, or cippo, first erected in 1310 and restored in 1791 (the date MDCCXCI is cut into the stone) and again in the twentieth century. Local tradition ties it to the defeat, on this spot, of rebels in the 1310 conspiracy of Baiamonte Tiepolo against the Republic — put down, the story goes, chiefly by the guardian of the Scuola Grande della Carità. The base carries carvings of a Venetian lion in the distinctive “moeca” (soft-shell crab) form, the emblem of the Carità confraternity, and Saint Luke, patron of the Venetian painters’ guild — a coincidence of dedication with the square’s own name. Some Venetians have long liked to say the flagpole marks the geographical centre of the city; the claim is true only in spirit, not on a map.