ghetto is here and a pretty calle,
and soon we come to one of the palaces which are shown to visitors, the
Papadopoli, once the Coccina-Tiepolo, with blue posts and in the spring
a Judas-tree red in the garden.

My advice to those who visit such palaces as are shown to the public is
not to go alone. The rigours of ceremonial can be tempered to a party,
and the efficient and discreet French major-domo is less formidable to
several visitors than to one. The principal attraction of the
Papadopoli Palace is two carnival pictures by Tiepolo; but the visitor
is also shown room after room, sumptuous and unliveable in, with signed
photographs of crowned heads on ormolu tables.

The Rio dei Meloni, where is the Palazzo Albrizzi to which Byron used to
resort as a lion, runs by the Papadopoli. At the other corner is the
Businello, a nice solid building with two rows of round window-arches.
Then the tall decayed Rampinelli and, followed by a calle, the Ramo
Barzizza, and next the Mengaldo, with a very choice doorway and arches,
now a statuary store; then the yellow Avogadro, now an antiquity
dealer's and tenements, with a fondamenta; then a new building, and we
reach the fine red palace adjoining the Casa Petrarca, with its ramping
garden.

These two palaces, which have a sottoportico beneath them leading to S.
Silvestro, stand on the site of the palace of the Patriarchs of Grado,
who had supreme ecclesiastical power here until the fifteenth century,
when the Patriarchate of Venice was founded with a residence near S.
Pietro in Castello.

From this point a fondamenta runs all the way to the Rialto bridge. The
buildings are not of any particular interest, until we come to the last
one, with the two arches under it and the fine relief of a lion on the
facade: once the head-quarters of the tithe collectors.

People have come mostly to speak of the Rialto as though it was the
bridge only. But it is the district, of which the bridge is the centre.
No longer do wealthy shipowners and merchants foregather hereabouts; for
none exist. Venice has ceased to fetch and carry for the world, and all
her energies are now confined within her own borders. Enough to live and
be as happy as may be!

[Illustration: DOORWAY OF S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE]

In beauty the Rialto falls far short of most of the bridges of Venice.
Its hard angle superimposed on the great arch is unpleasing to the eye
accustomed in this city to easy fluid curves. Seen f