Ponte delle Tette

This guide to Ponte delle Tette in Venice follows the sixteenth-century Venetian Republic's strange public policy toward the sex workers confined to this district, and its stated goal of steering men away from what officials of the time called sin against nature. It traces the district's roots in the cramped, curfewed quarter of Carampane, marked by a yellow scarf, and the regular visitor it drew in Giacomo Casanova. One estimate put the number of prostitutes working the city at over eleven thousand.