Bridge of Sighs

In the Rio di Palazzo, the stream that runs along the Doges' Palace is the famous Bridge of Sighs.

This connects the first floor of the Doges' Palace with the second floor of Palace of Prisons, built in the seventeenth century because the cells Palazzo Ducale, who were on the ground floor, had become inadequate and unsafe.

The architect Antonio Contin plane designed it so that prisoners could escape. On deck, divided into two unrelated parties, passing the prisoners from the rooms of the Judiciary passed directly into the town jail and only two small windows, partially occluded by the marble decorations that make them up, allow a glimpse into the river below and the bridges over the canal, the Ponte della Paglia to the St. Mark's Basin and Ponte della Canonica to the inner city.

The tradition handed down from the suspicion that the prisoners would sigh seeing, perhaps for the last time freedom.

The same tradition was later transformed: the sigh of suffering of the prisoners became sigh of passion for the promise of love of lovers who, in a gondola pass under: They vow eternal love.