A corner apartment block on Sant’Elena’s main avenue, chemist’s shop at street level since the quarter was first laid out — and still one today, run by the municipal pharmacy group A.M.E.S.
At a glance
On Viale Quattro Novembre — Sant’Elena’s central spine — a plain residential corner block carries the island’s municipal pharmacy on its ground floor, Farmacia Comunale n.1, still trading today under A.M.E.S., the company that has run Venice’s network of communal pharmacies since 2000. The building itself dates from the 1920s development of the island, attributed to Venetian architect and engineer Giulio Alessandri (1885–1940).
Key facts
- Architect (attributed): Giulio Alessandri (Venice, 1885 – 1940), engineer and architect active on Sant’Elena and the Lido in this period
- Ground floor: Farmacia Comunale n.1 – S. Elena, Viale Quattro Novembre 28, today run by A.M.E.S. (Aziende Municipalizzate riunite Esercizi Sanitari)
- Location: Viale Quattro Novembre, Sant’Elena, Venice
- GPS: 45.42528, 12.36245 · Open in Google Maps
History
Viale Quattro Novembre was laid out as the spine of the new Sant’Elena quarter in the 1920s, part of the same wave of building that gave the reclaimed island its parks, its war-themed street names, and its uniform run of residential blocks. Ground-floor shops along the avenue served the new quarter’s residents from the start, among them the corner premises that has held a municipal pharmacy for as long as the building has stood — today one of fourteen Farmacie Comunali that A.M.E.S. operates across Venice.
The building’s design is attributed to Giulio Alessandri, an engineer and architect from the generation that shaped Venice’s early-twentieth-century expansion at the Lido and, on this evidence, at Sant’Elena as well. Independent documentation specific to this address has not been located; the attribution should be read as a local tradition rather than an archivally confirmed fact, pending a documented source.
Sources
- Farmacie Comunali di Venezia, Farmacia Comunale n.1 – S. Elena — farmacie-comunali.com: the pharmacy’s address and its operation under A.M.E.S.
- L’architettura del Lido, Giulio Alessandri — comune.venezia.it: Alessandri’s dates and his work in Venice in this period (his Sant’Elena attribution is Vigolo’s contribution, not independently confirmed here)
- Coordinates cross-checked against OpenStreetMap Nominatim for Viale Quattro Novembre
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See this place and what’s around it →Record researched and written by Carla Szathvary for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
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