Ramo Rialto Vecchio o Parangon - 16th-century frescoes

Rialto Vecchio o Parangon fresco in Venice

Fresco Rialto Vecchio As you walk down the Rialto bridge towards Campo San Giacomo di Rialto, you will see Palazzo dei Camerlenghi on your right and Ruga dei Oresi, the street of the Goldsmiths, directly in front of you.

Passing through this Ruga during the tourist season is a real tour de force, as the shops overflow onto the Ruga, preventing you from moving forward.

And that's when you should take the opportunity to... stop.

Not in the middle of the stalls there, most of which sell low-quality trinkets, but just to the left of them.

Fresco Rialto Vecchio As soon as you cross the bridge, take the first sotoportego (covered walkway) on your left and enter under the covered walkway, which is also overflowing with shops but where it is already much less crowded.

Stop and... look up.

The vaults of this entire covered passageway, located in the western part of the Fabbriche Vecchie du Rialto, are covered in absolutely magnificent frescoes dating back to the 16th century!

They have just been completely renovated and you can now admire most of them in colours quite close to those they must have had originally.

Fresco Rialto Vecchio Unfortunately, many of them have been damaged by the passage of time, but on the whole what you can still see is well worth a visit when you pass through the Rialto district.

For added peace and quiet, the best time of day to admire them is in the evening.

As soon as the shops close, the area becomes deserted and you can enjoy looking at and photographing the frescoes, as we were able to do for you by quietly positioning our photo tripod right in the middle of the passageway to take a photo of each arcade!

The Rialto fire in 1514

Fresco Rialto Vecchio On January 10, 1514 a terrible fire devastated almost the entire island of Rialto and did so in barely six hours.

A fire had started in a shop on the Cordaria and the wind, which was blowing hard that day, helped it spread among buildings that were still, for the most part, made of wood.

The only buildings to survive the disaster were the old church of San Giacometto, dating back to 421, and the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi.

Fresco Rialto Vecchio The financial losses caused by this fire were enormous, given the importance of the Rialto district to Venetian commerce at the time. It is estimated that the price of goods lost in the fire (fabrics, jewellery, precious metals, etc.) amounted to several million ducats.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and the Serenissima took the opportunity to completely renovate this district, where the buildings that had been erected since the origins of Venice had not always been very rational.

Antonio Abbondi known as Scarpagnino

Fresco Rialto Vecchio Antonio Abbondi, known as Scarpagnino, the local proto, was commissioned to rebuild the Fabbriche Vecchie on the three sides of Campo San Giacomo di Rialto.

Scarpagnino built the three long porticoed buildings that still surround the Campo today, topped by two storeys of offices.

Antonio Abbondi Scarpagnino opted for sobriety, repeating the arches, porticoes and windows along the entire length of the buildings.

Fresco Rialto Vecchio The Procuratie Vecchie in St. Mark's Square, from around the same period, is an almost identical example of this type of repetition and architectural sobriety.

Many see it as the model on which our current office buildings are built, except that this was in... 1522, when construction of the Fabbriche Vecchie on the Rialto was completed.

These buildings were referred to as the Fabbriche Vecchie, as opposed to the Fabbriche Nuove, which were nevertheless built barely thirty years later, simply because that is what they were called before the fire of 1514.

The Ramo Rialto Vecchio o Parangon

Fresco Rialto Vecchio The ramo of interest to us, which is in fact the internal walkway beneath the porticoes on the west facade of the Fabbriche Vecchie, is called the Rialto Vecchio o Parangon.

If you can now understand where the name Rialto Vecchio comes from, we need to explain the name Parangon.

This word comes from the name given to high-quality silk sheets.

It was in 1457 that the Corte de Parangon was created, an organisation responsible for ensuring the quality of fabrics made in Venice.

Fresco Rialto Vecchio The production of silk fabrics was systematically compared to the so-called quality fabric standards held by the Corte de Parangon.

The reasons for this control were twofold: to protect Venetian silks by preventing them from being imitated by non-Venetian competitors, but also to succeed in maintaining, thanks to precise criteria, a high level of quality in the production of Venetian silks.

And these criteria related as much to the yarns used as to the weaving itself or the dyes used.

Fresco Rialto Vecchio Regularly verifying the production of Venetian silks with the comparison pieces held by the Corte de Parangon enabled the Venetian textile industry to fight off external competition for longer.

You now know almost everything about the Ramo Rialto Vecchio o Parangon.

All that remains is for you to go and admire this open-air quasi-museum with its frescoes from 1522, and imagine their magnificence in the environment of the time.

Squares Arsenal | Hunchback | Dogana | Colleoni | Rioba | Piazzetta St. Mark | Stefano | Rialto Vecchio

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