Doge's Palace

    The Doge's Palace, Venice, has facades which date from 1309 to 1424, designed by Giovanni and Bartolomeo Buon. The palace, started in the ninth century, several times rebuilt, and completed in the Renaissance period, forms part of that great scheme of town-planning which was carried out through successive centuries. The facades, with a total length of nearly 500 ft, have open arcades in the two lower stories, and the third story was rebuilt after a fire in the sixteenth century, so as to extend over the arcades. This upper story is faced with white and rose-colored marble, resembling ornate windows and finished with a lace-like parapet of oriental cresting.

    The arcade columns, which originally stood on a stylobate of three steps, now rise from the ground without bases, and the sturdy continuous tracery of the second tier of arcades lends an appearance of strength to the open arches. The capitals of the columns, particularly the angle capital which was eulogized by Ruskin in The Stones of Venice, are celebrated for the delicate carving in low-grained marble. The whole scheme of columned and pointed arcades, with its combination of carved capitals and long horizontal lines of open tracery, is of that unique design which can only be termed Venetian Gothic.

The Bridge of Sighs connects the Doge's Palace to the west and the New Prisons. Visitors to the Doge's Palace walk through the bridge, and view a few of the prison cells.  According to legend, the bridge takes its name from the sighs of the prisoners, as they make their way from the prisons to the offices of the State Inquisitors in the Doge's Palace itself.