San Polo

This guide to San Polo in Venice centers on Lorenzino de' Medici, an exile who had killed his own cousin, the tyrant Duke Alessandro, in Florence eleven years earlier and fled to Venice believing the lagoon would keep him safe. It follows him on an ordinary February evening in 1548, walking home from mass through the square with a companion, and the question historians have argued over ever since: whose order was waiting for him in the dark. Europe itself split for years over whether Lorenzino was a murderer or a hero.