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The bridge was built around 1600 to connect the Doge's Palace, seat of Venetian government, to the New Prison across the Rio di Palazzo canal -- the Republic's existing prison cells inside the palace itself had become too cramped for the number of people it was holding.
Antonio Contino, nephew of Antonio da Ponte, the architect who had recently completed the Rialto Bridge, designed the enclosed limestone passage so that prisoners and officials could cross between the courtroom and the cells without being seen from -- or seeing out to -- the city below.
The bridge's now-famous name is a 19th-century invention, popularized by Lord Byron's poetry, built on the story that condemned prisoners caught a last glimpse of Venice through its small windows before disappearing into their cells. By the time the name took hold, the bridge had long since stopped being used for its original grim purpose.
Today the Bridge of Sighs is one of Venice's most photographed structures, its romantic reputation -- helped along by a popular but unverifiable legend that a kiss on a gondola passing beneath it at sunset guarantees eternal love -- almost entirely eclipsing the building's original function as a prisoner's last route out of the light.