Located in the heart of Venice, in its oldest and most significant part, the itinerary called Mercerie links Rialto, across the famous bridge, to Piazza San Marco (fig. 4.1). It stands in the foundational area of the city, still characterized by a dense presence of shops, warehouses, and landing points for transport boats on both edges of the route—the lagoon at San Marco on one side, and the Grand Canal on the other. From time immemorial, and still today (in a radically different era), this area—the route of the Mercerie and its equally dense branches full of shops—represents the quintessence of the city’s mercantile vocation and coincides with its identity.

The street properly defined as Merceria starts from Piazza San Marco through the arch of the Torre dell’Orologio, from which this part of the street takes its name (fig. 4.2); it then proceeds past the parish church of San Zulian, crosses the wide bridge of the Bareteri (the sellers of woolen caps), touches the apse of the convent church of San Salvador, and ends in Campo di San Bartolomeo, close to the church of the same name and at the foot of the Rialto bridge (see Ill. 1).