Discover Campo San Barnaba

Boschetti's church front of 1776 is a plain temple facade: four Corinthian pilasters carrying a pediment, almost no relief, and no sculpture. It is late and conservative for its date, and the flatness reads oddly against the medieval bell tower behind it.

That campanile is the older and more interesting structure -- 11th-century, in bare brick, with the conical spire that Venetian towers of that period generally lost in later rebuildings. It stands apart from the church, as most Venetian campanili do, because the ground could not be trusted to carry the two together.

The buildings enclosing the campo are modest three- and four-storey houses in rendered brick with shops beneath, which is why the church reads as the only formal element in an otherwise domestic space.

Just off the square, the Ponte dei Pugni keeps four white marble footprints set into the crown of the bridge. They marked the starting positions for the organised fistfights between the Nicolotti and Castellani factions that were held on parapet-less bridges like this one until the practice was banned in 1705.