Overview
The single span was the engineering argument: rather than piers in the navigation channel, one arch of twenty-eight metres carried on twelve thousand timber piles driven into the mud, which have held for four centuries. Two rows of shops run up the ramps to a portico at the top, as they did from the beginning; the rents paid for the bridge. The market on the west bank is older than the bridge and still sells fish and vegetables every morning except Sunday.
Highlights
Cross it early or late; between ten and six it is a slow-moving crowd with cameras. The Rialto market at seven in the morning is the other half of the visit and the reason the bridge exists. For a photograph of the bridge itself, the Riva del Vin below it or a vaporetto on line 1 gives what the bridge cannot.