Rialto Bridge
— one white arch, and the whole canal beneath it.
Not only on a wall.
“The oldest of the four bridges over the Grand Canal, and for more than 250 years the only one. Antonio da Ponte set a single arch of pale Istrian stone across the water in 1591, two ramps of shops climbing to a portico at the crown. People have crossed it every day since. Early, before the market on the San Polo side fills, the stone holds a soft light and the canal underneath goes quiet between boats. Then the vaporetti start, and the bridge belongs to everyone again.
Rialto Bridge, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Rialto Bridge crosses the Grand Canal at its narrowest point in central Venice, linking the San Marco and San Polo districts. It is the oldest of the four bridges over the canal and, until the 19th century, the only one. A pontoon crossing called the Ponte della Moneta stood on the site from 1181, built under Nicolò Barattieri; a wooden bridge replaced it in 1255 and collapsed more than once before the city committed to stone in the 1580s. The present bridge rises in a single arch of nearly 32 metres, about 7.3 metres above the water and 22.9 metres wide, with covered ramps of shops climbing to a portico at the crown.
The bridge is built of Istrian stone, the dense pale limestone quarried across the Adriatic in present-day Croatia that Venice used throughout the city for its resistance to salt water. Antonio da Ponte won the commission in a public competition held in 1587, his design chosen over proposals from better-known architects, among them Andrea Palladio, and the bridge went up between 1588 and 1591. Its single arch carries no support in the middle; the entire load runs to the two abutments, which were sunk into the canal bed on some twelve thousand timber piles. Many at the time doubted so flat and unsupported a span would stand. Da Ponte was helped by his nephew Antonio Contin, who would later design the Bridge of Sighs.
The bridge is open at any hour and free to cross, carrying foot traffic only; the climb to the portico at the crown gives one of the clearest views down the Grand Canal. On the San Polo bank it lands at the Rialto Market, where the fish and produce stalls have traded since the Republic's early centuries and still open in the morning, roughly Tuesday through Saturday, closing by early afternoon. The two covered arcades on the bridge hold about two dozen small shops, today mostly jewellery and souvenirs, a use that reaches back to its completion in 1591. Crowds run heaviest from late morning on; the quiet hour is just after sunrise, before the first vaporetti and the market traffic.