Dark Venice: Spies, Informers and the Council of Ten

Stop between the two granite columns, facing the lagoon. Many Venetians still avoid walking right through the middle here. On top of one stands the winged lion of Saint Mark. On the other, Saint Theodore, the city's first patron, standing on a crocodile. The columns went up around 1172. And this gap between them became the place for public executions. People were hanged here, beheaded here, and their bodies left on display. It was the first thing anyone arriving by sea would see. A warning without words. Now turn and look at the palace gallery on the first floor. Count the columns of the l…

You are facing the Porta della Carta, the palace's ceremonial entrance. Above it, a doge kneels before the lion of Saint Mark. Notice the gesture. The head of state is on his knees. In Venice, the doge was not a king. He was an employee watched for life. He could not open foreign letters alone. He could not leave the city without permission. His sons were barred from certain offices. In 1355, Doge Marino Faliero tried to change that. He plotted a coup to make himself lord of Venice. He was found out within days. He was tried and beheaded at the top of the courtyard staircase, the very spot…

Look on the wall for a slot carved in stone, with the face of a lion or a beast around it. It is a bocca di leone, a lion's mouth. It was a letter box. Anyone could slip in a folded sheet and denounce a neighbor. There were mouths like this around the palace and in several districts. Each had its own purpose: crimes against the state, tax evasion, blasphemy, polluting the water. The inscription spelled out what it was for. Secret denunciations against anyone hiding income or plotting against the republic. There were rules. For the Council to act, a denunciation had to be signed and backed …

You have entered the hall of the Council of Ten. Look up at the ceiling, full of gilded paintings. Some are by Veronese. It all began in 1310. A nobleman, Bajamonte Tiepolo, tried to seize power with armed men. A storm, and a mortar dropped from a window, wrecked the coup. The republic was shaken. It set up an emergency tribunal to hunt down the plotters. It was meant to last two months. It lasted almost five centuries. The Ten were elected for one year and could not serve again straight away. They sat with the doge and his councillors. They investigated, tried and sentenced in secret. Th…

This is the Sala della Bussola. Notice the large wooden cabinet in one corner. It is a disguised door. This is where people summoned by the Ten waited. Seated, with no idea why they were there. That wooden door led straight to the inquisitors' offices and, beyond them, to the prisons. Many went through it and never returned to the square. On the wall, on the inside, was one of the denunciation mouths. Whatever was slipped in outside dropped straight into this room. In 1539 the republic added another layer: the three State Inquisitors. Two came from the Ten and wore black. The third was one…

This small, bare-walled room was the Camera del Tormento. The torture chamber. The main method was called the rope. The accused had his hands tied behind his back and was hoisted to the ceiling by his wrists. His body weight did the rest. Shoulders dislocated. The questions continued. Torture was not a punishment. It was part of the interrogation. Across most of Europe it was used this way, to extract a confession. What set Venice apart was the record. A notary wrote down every question, every answer and every scream. Those papers still exist in the State Archive. You can read them, with …

You are under the palace roof. Above these beams lie sheets of lead. That is why these cells were called the Piombi, the Leads. In summer the lead turned the place into an oven. In winter, into an icebox. These cells were for prisoners of some standing, locked up for indefinite terms. The most famous inmate arrived in July 1755. Giacomo Casanova, adventurer, gambler and seducer. He was never told his sentence. He got hold of an iron bar and sharpened it for weeks. He hid it inside a Bible, under a plate of pasta, to pass it to another prisoner. That prisoner was a monk, Marino Balbi. He cu…

You have come down to the lowest level of the palace. These cells were called the Pozzi, the Wells. They were not underground, but they felt like it. They sat at the level of the canal water. Damp crept up the walls all year round. Look at the size of the doors. You had to stoop to get through. Inside, the cells were lined with wooden planks to keep out some of the cold. Light came in only through tiny holes. Many prisoners spent their days in darkness, with an oil lamp when they could pay for one. See if you can spot inscriptions in the wood or stone. Names, dates, crosses. Prisoners left…

You are inside the Bridge of Sighs. Step up to one of the small carved stone windows and look out. You see a slice of lagoon and the island of San Giorgio. For many prisoners, this was the last they saw of Venice. The bridge was built between 1600 and 1603. It links the palace, where people were tried, with the new prisons across the canal. Inside are two separate passages, one going and one coming back. Prisoners never crossed paths. The name is not Venetian. Lord Byron made it famous in 1818, in a poem. He imagined the sigh of the condemned at a final view of freedom. It is a romantic i…

You have crossed the bridge. You are in the Prigioni Nuove, the New Prisons. They were built in the late sixteenth century, because the Pozzi were no longer enough. They were among the first buildings in Europe designed from scratch as a prison. Look at the Istrian stone walls and the bars. The cells are larger and drier than those in the palace. Some had a window. It was real progress. The republic was beginning to separate trial from confinement, the palace from the prison. Notice the graffiti on the walls. Ships, names, calendars scratched day by day. Some are more than three hundred ye…

You are in Campo San Zaccaria. Look at the church's white facade, one of the most elegant of the Venetian Renaissance. This place was bound up with power for centuries. The convent's nuns came from the richest families, and the doge visited them every year at Easter. In 864, Doge Pietro Tradonico was leaving Mass here. They were waiting for him. He was stabbed to death at the door. In 1172, Doge Vitale II Michiel returned from a military disaster. An angry crowd chased him. He tried to take refuge in this convent. He never made it. A man stabbed him in a nearby alley. The republic punishe…

You are in Campo dei Mori. Look on the walls for stone statues wearing turbans. One, on the corner, has an iron nose. According to tradition, they depict three merchant brothers who came from the Morea, in Greece, in the twelfth century. Venetians called them the Moors. Legend says they were cheats and God turned them to stone. That is how locals explain the stern faces staring at you. The one with the iron nose is called Sior Antonio Rioba. And he had a second life. At night, people stuck anonymous notes on him. Satires, jokes about the powerful, verses against the nobles. Signed by Rioba…

You have entered Campo del Ghetto Nuovo. Look at the height of the buildings: seven, eight storeys. They are the tallest of old Venice. On 29 March 1516, the Senate ruled that all the city's Jews must live on this island. The area had been a foundry, a getto. That is where the word comes from. At dusk, gates were shut. Christian guards watched the entrance all night. And the Jews had to pay their wages. By day they could go out to work, wearing a compulsory mark: a yellow hat, later a red one. There was no room to grow outwards. So the houses grew upwards, floor upon floor, with lower and …