Discover Museum of Naval History & Arsenal

The Arsenale is a fortified enclosure rather than a building: roughly 45 hectares of basins, docks, rope-walks and workshops behind a continuous crenellated brick wall, with towers at the water entrance. From outside almost nothing of it is visible, which was the point.

The Porta Magna of 1460, attributed to Antonio Gambello and probably modelled on a Roman arch at Pola, is generally counted the first Renaissance building in Venice -- classical columns and entablature at a moment when the rest of the city was still building Gothic. The winged lion of St Mark above the doorway holds a closed book, unusually, rather than the customary open one.

Inside, the surviving industrial fabric is the more remarkable part. The Corderie della Tana is a rope-walk over 300 metres long, rebuilt by Antonio da Ponte in 1579, its length dictated purely by the length of cable a warship needed. The Gaggiandre, two covered wet docks attributed to a design by Jacopo Sansovino, are vaulted stone halls open to the water at one end so that hulls could be worked on afloat and under cover.