The Bridge of Sighs was built in Istrian stone, baroque, and was built in the early seventeenth century by the architect Antonio Contin, Bernardino Contin's son, by order of the Doge Marino Grimani, whose stem is carved on it.
This picturesque bridge in Venice, located a short distance from Piazza San Marco, crosses the Rio di Palazzo connecting with a double pass to the Doge's Palace New Prisons, the first building in the world built specifically to be a prison. It was built as a passage for the prisoners from prisons to the offices of the Inquisitors of State where they would be judged.
Known throughout the world, photographed by tourists from everywhere, from just two places from which observable (apart from the gondolas) from the Canonica Bridge and the Bridge of Straw. This name was given because the legend says that, during the Serenissima, the prisoners, crossing it, sighed at the prospect of seeing for the last time the outside world. The legend is entirely baseless, because the view from the bridge to the outside is almost nothing. The term "sighs" indicates only the last breath they took in the free world because once convicted in the Republic of the Doges they could not go back.
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