Campo Santi Apostoli and the palace of Marino Falier

You have entered Cannaregio, the most populous of the six sestieri, the historic districts of Venice. Look at the brick palace overlooking the rio, as the smaller canals are called here: it has an arcade at water level and groups of arched windows in the Byzantine taste. This is Palazzo Falier, and its most famous owner lost his head.

1The traitor doge

Marino Falier was elected doge in 1354, already an old man after a long career in the Republic's service. The following year a plot was uncovered to break the power of the great patrician families and make him lord of the city, and he was at its centre. The Council of Ten tried him, and on 17 April 1355 he was beheaded in the Doge's Palace.

Executing him was not enough for Venice: it wanted to erase him. In the Hall of the Great Council, where a series of portraits records the doges one by one, his was replaced by a painted black cloth with a Latin inscription marking the place of Marino Falier, "beheaded for his crimes". Centuries later his story inspired a tragedy by Byron (1821) and a painting by Delacroix.

2The new street

The broad thoroughfare that brought you here, the Strada Nova, is recent by Venetian standards: it was cut through in the second half of the 19th century, demolishing houses to link the Rialto with the railway station. That is why, unusually, it is called a strada rather than a calle.

3What to look for

• The arcade of Palazzo Falier, right on the water of the rio.
• The grouped arched windows, Byzantine in style.
• The bell tower of Santi Apostoli, towering over the campo.