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Updated: June 28, 2025
There is no work and no money; people must do something; so they steal. Ci vuol pazienza! Bear witness against an ill-fated fellow- sufferer? God forbid! Stop a thief? I think a burglar might run from Rialto to San Marco, and not one compassionate soul in the Merceria would do aught to arrest him povareto! Thieves came to the house of a friend of mine at noonday, when his servant was out.
At this time the Merceria, or street of the shops, presents the aspect of a fair, and is arranged with a tastefulness and a cunning ability to make the most of every thing, which are seldom applied to the abundance of our fairs at home.
Mark's, we landed at the Rialto, and went on foot up those streets which are called the Merceria, where we saw the shops of spices and silks and other merchandise, all in fair order and excellent both in quality and in the great quantity and variety of goods for sale.
The Calle Lunga is the chief shopping centre of this neighbourhood its Merceria and all the needs of poorer Venetian life are supplied there. But what most interested me was the death-notices in the shop windows. Every day there was a new one; sometimes two.
A little way on the right is the beginning of the Frezzeria, a Venetian shopping centre second only to the Merceria. A little way on the left is the Calle del Ridotto where, divided now into a cinema theatre, auction rooms, a restaurant, and the Grand Canal Hotel, is the once famous Ridotto of which Casanova has much to tell.
S. Mark's main façade is of course beyond words wonderful; but after this the Piazza has only the Merceria clock and the Old and the New Procuratie, whereas the Piazzetta has S. Mark's small façade, the Porta della Carta and lovely west façade of the Doges' Palace, the columns bearing S. Mark's lion and S. Theodore, Sansovino's Old Library and Loggetta; while the Campanile is common to both.
"Where should we look to find some one to speak English?" asked her mother. As if in answer to her words there came the sound of boys' voices from a corner of the square, where the Merceria, with its shops, leads to the Rialto bridge. Edith and her mother looked up and saw a group of boys gathered around the pedestal of the lion farthest from the great church.
I wonder how many visitors to Venice, asked whether S. Theodore on his column and the Lion of S. Mark on his, face the lagoon or the Merceria clock, would give the right answer. The faces of both are turned towards the clock; their backs to the lagoon. The lion, which is of bronze with white agates for his eyes, has known many vicissitudes.
The black gondola was unendurable to her. She had accompanied her father to the Accademia, and mused on the golden Venetian streets of Carpaccio: she must have an open gondola to decorate in his manner, gaily, splendidly, and mock at her efforts a warning to all that might hope to improve the prevailing gloom and squalor by levying contributions upon the Merceria!
There is, indeed, over the principal door, which opens into the Merceria, a woman seated who has at her feet the severed head of a giant, almost in the form of a Judith; she is raising the head with her sword, and speaking with a German, who is below her; but I have not been able to determine for what he intended her to stand, unless, indeed, he may have meant her to represent Germany.
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