Chiesa di San Giacomo di Rialto

This guide to the Chiesa di San Giacomo di Rialto in Venice opens with a public flogging that once ran through the city's streets, ending at a squat carved hunchback on the steps outside, where officials also once read new laws and death sentences aloud to the merchants below. It traces the sideways, single-handed clock above the entrance that Venetians joked was never right, and the church's disputed claim to being the oldest in the city, founded after a carpenter's plea to stop a fire. Look for the gothic portico, one of the last of its kind still standing in Venice.