Ponte de la Cereria — Miozzi's Rio Novo, 1933
Venice (1933): the Istrian-stone bridge Eugenio Miozzi set over his new Rio Novo canal, named for the candle-makers who once worked this corner of the city.
At a glance
The Ponte de la Cereria crosses the Rio Novo a few steps from the Ponte del Pagan, and it belongs to the same year and the same project: 1933, and the opening of Eugenio Miozzi’s new canal. Where its neighbour is brick, the Cereria is a pale, low arch of Istrian stone with a balustrade — the more formal of the two crossings, and attributed to Miozzi himself.
Key facts
- Built: 1933, for the opening of the Rio Novo
- Designer: attributed to Eugenio Miozzi, chief engineer of Venice
- Structure: stone arch with brick-and-stone core and Istrian-stone bands
- Spans: between Fondamenta de la Cereria and Fondamenta del Passamonte, Dorsoduro
- Name: from the cereria, the candle-makers’ trade once based here
- Location: Dorsoduro, on the Rio Novo near Piazzale Roma
History
The Rio Novo was Venice’s most ambitious interwar public work: a new canal, dug between 1931 and 1933 through demolished houses and part of the Papadopoli gardens, to give Piazzale Roma a fast water route toward the Grand Canal. Its engineer was Eugenio Miozzi, the man behind the Accademia and Scalzi bridges and, in the same decade, the road causeway that first linked Venice to the mainland.
Miozzi bridged his new canal with a short family of crossings, and the Ponte de la Cereria — attributed to him directly — is the dressed-stone member of that family. It reads as the deliberate, permanent gesture of a chief engineer signing his own canal.
What you see
The bridge is a wide, shallow arch faced in Istrian stone, carried on a brick-and-stone core and finished with a low stone balustrade along both parapets. Its geometry is calm and horizontal, sitting the crossing gently over a broad reach of the canal. Against the brick Ponte del Pagan just upstream, the Cereria’s white stone reads as the more civic and finished of the pair.
The name
A cereria is a candle works. Venice once obtained raw wax from the Levant, Moldavia and Wallachia, and at its height the city counted around two dozen candle factories, their output feeding both export and the constant demand of the churches. The trade faded from the seventeenth century onward under competition from Trieste, but its name survived in this fondamenta and passed to the 1933 bridge.
Getting there
The bridge is a few minutes on foot from Piazzale Roma, alongside the Ponte del Pagan on the Rio Novo. It is a public crossing, open at all times.
Sources
- Conoscere Venezia — Ponte de la Cereria sul Rio Novo (dating, material, the candle-making trade and the name).
- Wikipedia — Rio Novo (Venezia) (excavation, purpose, Miozzi’s bridges).
- Literature on Eugenio Miozzi and the Rio Novo bridges (1931–1933).
Gallery
Another view — photograph by Stefano Vigolo, 2026.
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