Ponte dei Sospiri

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The Ponte dei Sospiri, better known as the Bridge of Sighs, was designed by Antonio Contino, the nephew of Antonio da Ponte, the man who had designed the Ponte di Rialto.

​It was built at the beginning of the 17th century to link the Palazzo Ducale to the Prigione Nuove (New Prisons), which had just been constructed on the other side of the canal. 

The bridge, which was originally known as the Ponte delle Prigioni, derives its romantic name from the imagined sighs of the prisoners, as they caught a final glimpse of Venice on the way to their cells. 

John Ruskin, the eminent Victorian writer and art critic, dismissed the bridge as '...a work of no merit, and of a late period...owing the interest chiefly to its pretty name, and to the ignorant sentimentalism of Byron.'

Bridge of Sighs