Named for the campaign that broke the last Austro-Hungarian offensive of the First World War, this square sits inside Sant’Elena’s public-housing quarter — the largest single urban-planning intervention ever carried out in historic, insular Venice.
At a glance
This apartment block at Campo Monte Grappa 11 belongs to the “Vittorio Emanuele III” quarter that the IACP (Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari) of the Province of Venice built on Sant’Elena starting in the early 1920s: land reclaimed at the eastern tip of the historic city and given over, almost uniquely for insular Venice, to planned public housing rather than the organic, centuries-old street pattern found everywhere else in the lagoon.
Key facts
- Quarter: “Vittorio Emanuele III,” built by the IACP of the Province of Venice from the early 1920s
- Engineer: Paolo Bertanza, entrusted by the Comune of Venice from 1924 with designing IACP buildings on Sant’Elena
- Original 1906 layout: a planimetric map for Sant’Elena’s new construction areas had already been drawn by engineer Francesco Marsich
- Significance: described as the largest single urban-planning intervention in historic, insular Venice
Public housing on reclaimed ground
Sant’Elena’s transformation began on paper in 1906, when engineer Francesco Marsich drew the first planimetric map marking out areas for new construction on the island. The real building campaign came later: from 1924, the Comune of Venice tasked the IACP with the operation that created the “Vittorio Emanuele III” quarter, entrusting the design of its buildings to engineer Paolo Bertanza, whose work eventually ran to twenty buildings and forty-nine apartments in this first phase alone. The result, unlike anything else in the historic city, is a district of plain, repeated apartment blocks around named squares and streets — among them Campo Monte Grappa, honouring the 1918 battles that held the Italian line against Austria-Hungary.
Getting there
Campo Monte Grappa is on Sant’Elena, a short walk from the Sant’Elena vaporetto stop.
Sources
- conoscerevenezia.it, “Case dello IACP e di altri enti pubblici a Sant’Elena, già quartiere ‘Vittorio Emanuele III'” — on the 1924 IACP operation and engineer Paolo Bertanza.
- storiadellacitta.it (Ferrighi, “Venezia e la casa salubre”) — on Francesco Marsich’s 1906 planimetric map for Sant’Elena.
- Stefano Vigolo, who photographed the building.
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See this place and what’s around it →Record researched and written by Stefano Vigolo for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
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