Corso del Popolo Site Features

The Corso is arcaded along much of its length, with continuous porticoes sheltering the shops -- a mainland Veneto formula rather than a Venetian one, and practical in a town this exposed.

The buildings are three and four storeys in plastered brick, painted in the ochres and reds of the lagoon, with Venetian window forms at a modest scale.

Punctuating the street are the town's churches and civic buildings: the cathedral at the south end, the church of Sant'Andrea with its Romanesque bell tower, the granary building, and the Palazzo Poli associated with Goldoni.

The defining structural fact is the relationship to the Vena: the canal runs parallel one block east, and the short calli connecting them are the town's whole circulation system, allowing a boat and a cart to serve the same house from opposite sides.

The Vena and its boats

Step off the Corso down any lane to the east and you reach the canal, lined with working fishing boats. This is the town's best single view.

The fish market

Chioggia's market is one of the most important on the Adriatic, and the produce is landed a few hundred metres away.

The arcades

Continuous shelter the length of the street, and where the town's social life happens in the evening.

Sant'Andrea's bell tower

A Romanesque campanile on the Corso, holding what is claimed to be one of the oldest tower clock mechanisms in the world.

The Corso runs the length of a narrow island in the southern Venetian Lagoon, with water on both sides -- the Vena canal one block east and the lagoon channels a short distance west.

The island is entirely flat and barely above sea level, and the street is straight because the island is: there is no topography here to bend it.

At its northern end it opens onto the lagoon at Piazzetta Vigo; at its southern end the land continues toward the bridge to Sottomarina and the Adriatic beach beyond.