A Crafty Traveler | Family and Travel Adventures

Getting a great photograph is generally a bit of a fluke for me. It really has more to do with volume rather than skill – I take hundreds of pictures when I’m travelling, and when you do that you’re bound to get a couple of good ones.

This photograph is one of my good ones.

The Bridge of Sighs, or Ponte dei Sospiri in Italian, passes over the Rio di Palazzo and connects the New Prison to the interrogation rooms in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. Legend has it that it is called the Bridge of Sighs, a name coined by Lord Byron, because it was through these small windows that convicts had their last view of Venice before being imprisoned and they would sigh as they passed. In reality this probably never happened, but it’s a rather romantic story to associate with the ornate little bridge.

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand.

Lord Byron

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iv. Stanza 1.

Another romantic story associated with the bridge is the legend that if lovers kiss under the bridge at sunset they will be granted eternal love. Again, in reality the myth was probably invented (or at least spread) by gondoliers looking to get some extra money out of tourists – not that I’m a cynic or anything.