Venice, Veneto · 1933 · Bridge over the Rio Novo
At a glance
The Tre Ponti are not one bridge but a knot of them, thrown across the point where the Rio Novo meets the Rio de le Burchielle and the Rio de Sant’Andrea. Three arches spring from a single central pier, with a fourth a few metres away — which is why Venetians long called the place the Quattro Ponti, the four bridges, and why the name on the map has never quite settled.
Key facts
- Built: 1933, in the works for the opening of the Rio Novo
- Engineer: Eugenio Miozzi, chief engineer to the city of Venice
- Structure: brick and stone arches, joined on a central pier
- Parapets: iron bands of close-set volutes, carried on small Istrian-stone columns
- Crosses: the Rio Novo, the Rio de le Burchielle and the Rio de Sant’Andrea
- Older name: I Quattro Ponti, from the fourth arch alongside
- Coordinates: 45.4357333, 12.3203718
History
By 1930 Piazzale Roma had become the road terminus of Venice, and the way into the city by water — the long curve of the Grand Canal — was a bottleneck. The answer was to cut a new canal straight through the built fabric: the Rio Novo, excavated between 1931 and 1933 under Eugenio Miozzi, the city’s chief engineer, through the Papadopoli garden and a swathe of demolished warehouses, alleys and courtyards, to shorten the run from Piazzale Roma toward Ca’ Foscari and San Marco.
New water meant new crossings. Miozzi built five bridges over the Rio Novo — the Papadopoli, the Cereria, the Sbiaca, Santa Margherita and Ca’ Foscari — and rebuilt the Tre Ponti where the new canal met the old ones. They went up in a single campaign in 1933, and they are among the few pieces of twentieth-century infrastructure that Venice absorbed without argument.
What you see
From the fondamenta the arches read as one continuous structure: low brick rings banded with Istrian stone, springing from a shared pier in the middle of the water. The parapets are the part to look at — not the usual Venetian stone balustrade but iron, worked into tight rows of volutes and set on stubby stone columns, a 1930s detail on a form a thousand years old.
Stand on any of the arches and you can see down three canals at once. It is the clearest place in Venice to understand what Miozzi’s new canal actually did to the map.
The bridges today
Practical information
- A public crossing, open at all hours and free.
- Steps on both sides; there is no ramp.
Getting there
The Rio Novo runs from Piazzale Roma toward Ca’ Foscari; all its bridges are within a few minutes’ walk of each other, and of the Piazzale Roma vaporetto stops.
Nearby
- Ponte del Pagan — a 1933 bridge on Venice’s Rio Novo
- Ponte de la Cereria — Miozzi’s Rio Novo, 1933
- Ponte degli Scalzi — Miozzi’s stone arch at the station
Sources
- Conoscere Venezia — Tre Ponti (I, II, III arco) sul Rio Novo, sul Rio de le Burchielle e sul Rio de Sant’Andrea, and Tre Ponti (IV arco) sul Rio Novo: dating, structure, parapets
- OpenStreetMap — location
Record researched and written by Stefano Vigolo for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
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The crossing from the fondamenta
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The arches and the central pier
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