Venice's largest campo, the church of San Polo with its Tiepolo canvases, and the quieter squares of the west.
Last updated August 14, 2026
In a nutshell: Campo San Polo is among the largest squares in Venice, home to the ancient church of San Polo and, in summer, an open-air cinema - while Santa Croce's Campo San Giacomo da l'Orio keeps a village feel. Back to the overview.
Follow the Ruga - it changes name as you proceed - keeping basically straight and trusting the signs to Ferrovia (the railway station) whenever you are unsure, and within a few minutes you arrive at the vast, unmissable Campo San Polo, among the largest squares in Venice. Its amphitheatre shape was dictated by a curving canal at the foot of the buildings on the right, now filled in to form a rio terà - a street built over water. A handful of rare trees decorate the square, along with equally rare benches that grateful locals claim, and in summer a screen and stands go up for open-air cinema. Antica Birraria la Corte, a good, family-oriented pizzeria/ristorante, sits at the far end. On the square stands the church of San Polo (S. Paolo Apostolo), one of Venice's most ancient churches, founded in the ninth century. Its boat-shaped wooden ceiling evokes the earliest basilicas erected after the fall of Rome. Though many visitors give it a miss, art lovers seek out Tintoretto's Last Supper (near the entrance) and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's Virgin Appearing to St John of Nepomuk (midway along the long wall); the real draw, though, is a sequence of arresting canvases by Tiepolo's son Domenico - The Stations of the Cross, tracing Jesus from his condemnation, to bearing his cross, to the crucifixion, to his blood-soaked entombment. Domenico's uplifting finale is overhead: the Resurrection, with Christ bursting from the tomb. Entry costs €3, open Mon–Sat 10:30–13:30 & 14:30–17:00, closed Sunday (English notes at the ticket desk).
From the church, continue roughly 200 yards (still following Ferrovia signs) along the narrow lane called Calle dei Nomboli: at #2800, directly opposite the Casa Goldoni museum, you will find Tragicomica, one of Venice's finest mask shops. It doubles as a workshop where you can watch masks being made - Walter, Alessandra and Giuliana are usually busy at their benches, and the owners are generally glad to show visitors around the workshop on weekdays if they buy a mask (a reservation is wise). Many of the masks follow stock characters of commedia dell'arte: the mischievous Harlequin, the lovely and shrewd Columbina, the rustic Pulcinella (who later became the Punch of puppet shows), and the grave, long-nosed Doctor (dottore). Masks have always been central to Carnevale, the city's pre-Lenten carnival, whose name means “farewell to meat”. Open Mon–Sat 10:00–13:00 & 14:00–19:00, +39 041 721 102, www.tragicomica.it.
Santa Croce's low-key answer to the grand piazza of San Marco, Campo San Giacomo da l'Orio skips the glamour entirely and keeps all the charm: it even has a communal vegetable garden of its own, and come afternoon the benches fill with neighbours while children race scooters across the paving. Inside the moody Romanesque San Giacomo dall'Orio church the interior reveals a ship's-keel ceiling, a column of green marble carried off from Constantinople back in the 6th century, and what may be Venice's most outré painting - Gaetano Zompini's Miracle of the Virgin, where a pagan priest who intrudes on Mary's funeral is left without his hands. Around the square, Al Prosecco pours unusual natural-process wines with quality cured meats, Gelato di Natura scoops superb artisan gelato - go for its fig-and-walnut, Majer does panini and pizza in slices, and beloved Osteria La Zucca - book ahead - serves a menu of veg and meat plates that turns over daily. The district's other squares are quieter still: Campo San Stin is an earthy local hangout whose pharmacy of ages past has found a new home in Ca' Rezzonico, the Venice Italian School teaches from a family house on the piazza, while low-key Brillo Parlante keeps the spritz flowing; Campo San Stae is among the handful of squares opening right onto the Grand Canal's banks, and the 18th-century San Stae church rises just behind; Campo San Zan Degolà is a quiet, atmospheric spot beside a Russian Orthodox place of worship; and Campo San Boldo appears in Kenneth Branagh's A Haunting in Venice, recognisable from the severed bell tower of Palazzo Grioni on the bridge beneath. On the Campo San Polo piazza itself, Venice's second-largest square, Birraria La Corte occupies a former bull stable and is remembered as the city's first Pilsner brewery, while one of the square's Gothic palazzi hides Tommaso Calabro, one of the newest contemporary galleries in town, devoted to lesser-known 20th-century artists.
A few bridge facts worth knowing before you cross. Antonio da Ponte's stone masterpiece was finished in 1592 after three years of work and a cost of 250,000 gold ducats - audacious enough that the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi publicly predicted its collapse. Four centuries and more on, it still stands, carrying traffic at the Grand Canal's slimmest point, and da Ponte's nephew Antonio Contino went on to design the Bridge of Sighs. For the bridge's finest sightline, take the San Polo bank and walk past the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi on the waterfront; from that spot you can also make out carved figures of St Mark with St Theodore on the span's northern flank. Come before 8:15am for the finest experience of the crossing, when the shop awnings are down, the tourists are absent and the balustraded decks belong to the early commuters. Earlier bridges had a harder life: Nicolò Barattieri's 1181 pontoon bridge, the Ponte della Moneta, was replaced by a wooden structure in 1255 with a central drawbridge for galleys; that one burned during the 1310 revolt, its successor collapsed in 1444 beneath spectators at a wedding parade, and a 1551 stone design submitted by Sansovino, Michelangelo and Palladio never got funded. Legend adds that only a pact with the devil let da Ponte finish at all.