Ponte Vigo Site Features

The bridge is a single segmental arch in white Istrian stone, with a stepped ramp on each side and a solid balustrade.

The form is Venetian and functional: the arch is high enough to let boats pass beneath and the steps are shallow enough for people carrying loads, which is what a working fishing town needed.

Istrian stone was chosen for the reason it always was in the lagoon -- it is dense, nearly non-porous, and resists salt water and frost far better than local brick.

At the north end stands a column carrying a small winged lion, the emblem of Venice, on a modest pedestal. Its scale relative to the great lions of Venice is the whole point of the local nickname.

Behind it opens Piazzetta Vigo, the small square where the canal meets the lagoon and the boats moor.

El gato

The undersized lion of St Mark on its column -- Chioggia's best-known joke about itself, and worth walking to the end of the bridge for.

The view down the Vena

From the crown of the bridge, the canal runs straight back into the town between moored fishing boats. This is the standard image of Chioggia and it is genuinely good.

Piazzetta Vigo

The small square at the lagoon end, with the water opening out toward Venice and the ferry landing.

The Istrian stone

Three and a half centuries of salt and weather, and the surface is still crisp -- an object lesson in why the lagoon used this material.

The bridge sits at the point where the Vena canal ends and the Venetian Lagoon begins, at the northern tip of Chioggia's island.

Looking north from it, the lagoon opens out flat and shallow, with Pellestrina's long sandbar to the north-east and, in clear weather, Venice on the horizon 25 kilometres away.

Looking south, the canal runs straight back through the town, lined with moored fishing boats -- the working half of the same view.