Ponte degli Scalzi

This guide to the Ponte degli Scalzi in Venice opens with construction workers in nineteen thirty-two leaving deliberate gaps in the new stone arch, an odd choice made by engineer Eugenio Miozzi. You'll hear about the disliked iron bridge the Austrians built here in eighteen fifty-eight, too low for boats and too industrial for the city's taste, and why Miozzi chose Istrian limestone and a single flattened arch to replace it. Stand at the crown of the bridge and look down at the pale stone underfoot, quarried for a two-year rebuild finished in nineteen thirty-four.