Campo San Barnaba
If
you've seen David Lean's Summertime, a 1955 movie starring
Katherine Hepburn, you'll remember the shop where Jane Hudson (the
Hepburn character) sees a goblet of red Murano glass in the window of an
antique shop owned by Renato de Rossi (played by Rossano Brazzi). The
shop used in the film was set in a real storefront, which is still next
door to the church on the Campo San
Barnaba in Venice's district of
Dorsoduro--although it's now a toy store where you're more likely to
find sippy cups than Murano glass goblets.
The Campo San Barnaba has been featured in other movies,
too: most notably Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where the
deconsecrated Church of San Barnaba played a library with a secret route
to imaginary catacombs. (The ex-church is now a museum with replicas of
machines designed by Leonardo da Vinci.)
Even if you don't like movies, you'll enjoy the Campo
San Barnaba. It's a small but lively square with newsstands, bars,
restaurants, and a canal along one side where you can see barges,
workboats, ambulances, and other boats coming and going throughout the
day.
An outpost of the upscale
Grom gelateria
chain faces the campo, and a
vegetable barge or floating
greengrocer is moored just around the corner on the canal.
Also nearby is the
Hotel Pausania, which is a convenient place to stay if you like the
neighborhood or are leaving on a cruise from the cruise port's San
Basilio pier.
Here's what you'll see in our two satellite photo maps
below:
Photo 1 looks down
on the Campo San Barnaba and its church. Below the square, you can see
the exit from a sotteportego or covered passage that feeds into
the main pedestrian route to the
Accademia Bridge, the Campo San
Stefano, and the Piazza San Marco.
The campo's vegetable barge is around the
corner on the fondamenta (right before the footbridge called
the Ponte dei Pugni, or "Bridge of Fists", where rival clans
staged public fistfights in the 17th Century). The footbridge leads into
the Rio Terà Canal,
a short but wide street with shops, bars, and restaurants that leads
into the Campo Santa Margherita.
Photo 2 is a
close-up view of the square. You'll see the former church on the left,
and--right in front of it, next to the canal--the antique shop from
Summertime that is now a toy store. The sotteportego to
Accademia is underneath the off-white building along the back of the
campo.
Just off the rear side of the square (and perpendicular
to it) is a tiny cul-de-sac with a pleasant
vacation apartment. To the
right, along the Calle Lunga de San Barnaba,
you'll find several restaurants and shops, including a delightful shop
called
Annalie Pizzi e Ricami that features locally-made linens,
embroidered clothing, nightgowns, and other items at extremely
reasonable prices.
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