Fondamenta delle Zattere

This guide to the Fondamenta delle Zattere in Venice starts at the site of the Ospedale degli Incurabili, a sixteenth-century hospital built to care for Venice's first syphilis patients and later rebuilt by Antonio da Ponte, the architect of the Rialto Bridge. It follows how the orphaned girls raised inside became one of Europe's most sought-after concerts, singing unseen behind a screen for composers and travelers, among them, by their own accounts, Goethe and Rousseau.