Before you start, learn to read Venice. The white-painted signs on the walls are called nizioleti ("little sheets") and they are written in Venetian: a calle is a street, a campo is a square (they were once earth and grass), and the whole city has just one piazza, St Mark's. You are standing in Campo San Bartolomeo, "Bortolomio" on the sign.

1The Germans' house

The huge building with a square courtyard beside the bridge is the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. In Venetian a fontego was warehouse, office and compulsory lodging for foreign merchants all at once, and the word comes from the Arabic funduq. From the 13th century, traders from Nuremberg or Augsburg unloaded metals, cloth and spices here, while the Republic kept a close eye on every deal… and collected its taxes.

On the night of 27 to 28 January 1505 a fire destroyed it. Within three years it was standing again, and Giorgione and a young Titian were called in to decorate its facades. Only fragments of those frescoes survive, now kept in a museum.

2Dürer in Venice

The church on the campo, San Bartolomeo, belonged to the German community. During his stay in Venice, Albrecht Dürer painted the "Feast of the Rosary" (1506) for it; the picture is now in Prague. The Fondaco kept working until the fall of the Republic in 1797.

The statue of Goldoni, by Antonio Dal Zotto (1883), honours the playwright who brought the speech and trades of these very campi to the stage.

3What to look for

  • The nizioleto "CAMPO S. BORTOLOMIO", your first lesson in Venetian.
  • Goldoni's statue, caught mid-stride as if on his way to the theatre.
  • The white crenellations of the Fondaco, best seen from the Rialto Bridge.
Campo San Bartolomeo with the bronze statue of Carlo Goldoni
Campo San Bartolomeo, "Bortolomio" on the signs, with the statue of Goldoni.

Documented

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, warehouse and lodging for German-speaking merchants from the 13th century, was rebuilt between 1505 and 1508 after a fire and decorated with frescoes by Giorgione and Titian; it operated until 1797.

Sources and credits

Italian Wikipedia, «Fondaco dei Tedeschi»; Ennio Concina, «Fondaci. Architettura, arte e mercatura tra Levante, Venezia e Alemagna» (Marsilio, 1997); Giuseppe Tassini, «Curiosità veneziane» (1863).

Photos:

  • The white, crenellated facade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi on the Grand Canal: Andreas Praefcke, CC BY 3.0.
  • Campo San Bartolomeo with the bronze statue of Carlo Goldoni: Armin Kleiner, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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