Heritage Walk — What Holds Venice Up

This walk took place on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September 2026, for the European Heritage Days, and both mornings were fully booked. Andrea Manzo, who guided both, has written the account of the two days: Two mornings on the bridges of Venice: what the Heritage Days left behind.

The idea was simple: take the thing in Venice that everyone uses and nobody looks at — its bridges — and ask who designed them, what they are made of, and who keeps them in repair.

It set off from Campo San Simon Piccolo, opposite the station, past the Ponte degli Scalzi, rebuilt in Istrian stone in the 1930s in place of the Austrian iron bridge, and reached the two bridges no guidebook names: the pair Eugenio Miozzi threw across the Rio Novo in 1933, ten minutes from the station, when Venice cut itself a new waterway for the first time in centuries. It ended at the Rialto.

It was a walk about maintenance, not about monuments. That is how the association read this year’s theme, «Protecting Heritage. Renew, Resist, Reinvent»: not opening a place for two days, but describing the work that keeps it open on all the others. On the Rio Novo the group stopped in front of the city’s fire station, built with its boat garages opening onto the canal.

How it ran

• When: Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September 2026, one departure each morning at 10.30
• Meeting point: Campo San Simon Piccolo, beside the church of San Simeon Piccolo (Santa Croce), opposite the station
• Duration: about two hours, from the station to the Rialto
• Places: free, by booking, ten each morning — both mornings were full
• Led by: Andrea Manzo, volunteer guide of the association and author of the itinerary; the walk was guided in Italian

Two city rules shaped the walk. A group may not stop on a bridge or on its ramps, so each bridge was explained from the bank opposite. And an accompanied group of more than ten people must use radio guide systems: the walk did without them, which is why there were ten places a day.

Walk it yourself

The route stays online, free to follow on any day of the year. Map, numbered stops and GPS track are on the itinerary page:

What Holds Venice Up: Seven Bridges from the Lagoon Crossing to the Bridge of Sighs

Every stop has its own documented entry, with checked sources:

• Ponte della Libertà — the crossing of the lagoon
• Ponte degli Scalzi — Istrian stone in place of iron
• Palazzo Grandi Stazioni — by the station
• Ponte Papadopoli — Miozzi again, 1933
• Ponte de la Cereria — Miozzi on the Rio Novo, 1933
• Ponte del Pagan — its brick twin
• Venice Fire Station — the barracks with boat garages on the Rio Novo
• Ponte di Rialto — Antonio da Ponte, 1591
• Bridge of Sighs

Who ran it

The walk was organised by the Associazione Beni Culturali Online APS (ABCO APS), entered in the Italian third-sector register (RUNTS) on 31 July 2026, within the European Heritage Days 2026 — the Council of Europe programme coordinated in Italy by the Ministry of Culture.

It was the first of the Passeggiate Patrimoniali, a programme the association intends to repeat in other places and at other times.

Cover photograph: the Ponte de la Cereria on the Rio Novo. Photo: Stefano Vigolo. Photographs of the two mornings: Luigi De Marchi.