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Updated: April 30, 2025
I do not recollect any building of the kind in Europe that can be compared to it, since it far surpasses the Zecca at Venice. An avant-corps, decorated with six Ionic pillars, and supported by two wings, from the division of the facade, which is three hundred and thirty-six feet in breadth by eighty-four in elevation. It is distributed into two stories above the ground-floor.
For where could the image of the patron saint be more fitly placed than on the symbol of the Zecca? Was not the royal prerogative of coining money the surest token that a city had won its independence? and by the blessing of San Giovanni this "beautiful sheepfold" of his had shown that token earliest among the Italian cities.
The old papal mint, the Zecca, now an Italian possession, and guarded by soldiers of the royal army, is on the left of the passage leading to the museums, while on the right, just in front, is one of the entrances of honour to the Vatican where the papal Swiss Guard keeps watch and ward; and this is the entrance by which, according to etiquette, the pair-horse carriages convey the Pope's visitors into the Court of San Damaso.
"I don't know when I have envied anybody more than I did the other day the directors and clerks of the Zecca.
In February, March, and a part of April, when my wife was there, the weather was unsettled, stormy, and cold nearly all the time. Strada Zecca, a peaceful, shady, and silent retreat, used to be the street of the Government offices; and we see here many of the old palaces and houses of the Knight Crusaders, some of which are rather peculiarly constructed inside.
But you will see a finer show of our chief men by-and-by, Melema; my brother himself will be among the officers of the Zecca." "The banners are the better sight," said Piero di Cosimo, forgetting the noise in his delight at the winding stream of colour as the tributary standards advanced round the piazza.
I have seen clowns enough holding tapers aslant, both with and without cowls, to last me for my life." "Here it comes, then, Piero the car of the Zecca," called out Nello, after an interval during which towers and tapers in a descending scale of size had been making their slow transit.
My gondoliers shot off in an instant; but, though they went at a very rapid rate, I wished to fly faster, and getting into a bark with six oars, swept along the waters, soon left the Zecca and San Marco behind; and, launching into the plains of shining sea, saw turret after turret, and isle after isle, fleeting before me.
Nevertheless, the annual function of representing the patron saint was not among the high prizes of public life; it was paid for with something like ten shillings, a cake weighing fourteen pounds, two bottles of wine, and a handsome supply of light eatables; the money being furnished by the magnificent Zecca, and the payment in kind being by peculiar "privilege" presented in a basket suspended on a pole from an upper window of a private house, whereupon the eidolon of the austere saint at once invigorated himself with a reasonable share of the sweets and wine, threw the remnants to the crowd, and embraced the mighty cake securely with his right arm through the remainder of his passage.
Returning to Via Cairoli, at the bottom, in Piazza Zecca on your left, is one of the Balbi palaces; while in Piazza Annunziata, a little farther on, you come to the beautiful Church of Santissima Annunziata del Vastato, built by Della Porta in 1587.
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