Arsenale and Eastern Castello

Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni

A tiny Dalmatian confraternity hall whose ground floor holds Carpaccio's complete Saint George, Saint Jerome and Saint Tryphon cycle, still in its original room.

You're outside a low, plain building on Calle dei Furlani, easy to walk past if you don't know what's behind the door. This was the meeting house of the Schiavoni, Dalmatian sailors and artisans who settled in Venice, and their brotherhood was approved in 1451. Step inside and the ground floor hall is wrapped in nine canvases by Vittore Carpaccio, painted between 1502 and 1507 and still in the room they were made for. The benches are dark wood, the light falls through small windows, and the paintings hang close enough to study the stitching on a sleeve.

Look at Saint Augustine in his study, caught at the moment a voice interrupts his writing, or Saint George driving his lance into a dragon across a field scattered with bones. Carpaccio packed these scenes with the real texture of early sixteenth century Venice: hounds, armor, imported cloth, a glimpse of the lagoon. The brotherhood outlived the Republic and still owns this building today.

Arsenale di Venezia

The Arsenale's triumphal land entrance, flanked by Greek stone lions and carved with trophies from Venice's naval victories.

You're facing the Porta di Terra, the land gate of the Arsenale, and the first thing to know is that this arch was a factory entrance. Behind those copper-clad doors, Venice built the galleys that made the Republic a sea power, with thousands of workers at its peak. The gate went up around 1460, modeled on a Roman triumphal arch in Pula, and it is counted among the first Renaissance facades in the city. The winged Victories above the arch were added after the naval victory at Lepanto in 1571.

Now look at the lions. The biggest, about three meters high, came from the Greek port of Piraeus, where it sat so long that the harbor took the name Porto Leone. Francesco Morosini shipped it here in 1688. Study its haunches and you can still find runes scratched by Scandinavian mercenaries in the eleventh century.

The other lions came from Attica and the island of Delos, trophies of a city that carried its empire home piece by piece.