Why is it called the Bridge of Sighs? The history, and Casanova's escape

When was it built, and who crossed it?

On one side of the canal, the Rio di Palazzo, stands the Doge's Palace, with the Republic's courts and offices; on the other, the gaol: the New Prisons. The prison came first. The bridge followed in 1614, stitching the two buildings together in mid-air.

From outside it looks like one enclosed stone passage. Inside there are two, side by side, each leading somewhere different, and prisoners passed along them between the palace's halls and the cells.

Why is it called the Bridge of Sighs?

The name is younger than the bridge. The palace's official guide dates it to the Romantic period and says it was supposed to refer to the prisoners: on their way to the cells they'd look out for a moment through the little windows, see the lagoon and San Giorgio, and sigh. One last look at freedom.

It's a good story, so treat it for what it is: a way of making sense of the name, not something anyone has proved. Nor do we know who used the name first; we haven't managed to track that down.

What's certain is who spread it. In 1818 Byron opened the fourth canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage with "I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs", flanked by a palace and a prison. As far as we know, he didn't coin the name; he made it famous.

And the lovers' bridge? There isn't a trace of it in the documented history. Romantic, yes, but as in Romanticism, not romance.

What about the bridge next door?

The head-on view is from the neighbouring bridge, the one that crosses the same canal down at water level: the Ponte della Paglia. Less photogenic, more revealing.

Its name means straw, paglia, after the straw barges that tied up there. And Venice being Venice, a law of 1285 reads like a joke today: Palea non vendatur ad Pontem Paleae. No selling straw on the Straw Bridge.

Its other story is sad. Giuseppe Tassini, the 19th-century scholar who traced the origins of Venice's street names, records that the drowned were laid out beside the Paglia in the hope that someone would recognise them.

So the genuine sighs may have belonged to this bridge, not its famous neighbour. That's our interpretation, not a fact, but it's hard to shake.

What were the Leads?

Venice's best-known prison wasn't across the bridge at all, but inside the palace, under a roof covered in lead, piombo: hence the Piombi, or the Leads. Six or seven cells of wooden partitions with iron sheets nailed on, kept for prisoners of the Council of Ten, the tribunal that judged in secret and in a hurry: political cases, prisoners awaiting sentence, short terms.

Their reputation is worse than the reality, as the palace museum itself points out: the truly grim cells were the Pozzi, the Wells, on the ground floor, damp and gloomy, lit by oil lamps and aired through holes in the walls. Upstairs was better, at least.

The most famous inmate of the Leads was Giacomo Casanova, a Venetian from the parish of San Samuele, gambler, adventurer and writer. Tassini, who had no time for him, summed him up as "discolo e furfante", an unruly scoundrel. He arrived in July 1755 and needed more than a year to find a way out.

How did Casanova escape from the Leads?

Most of what follows comes from Casanova himself, who published it in loving detail in 1788, more than thirty years on, as the Story of My Escape from the Prisons of the Republic of Venice Known as the Leads. It's his version, and best read that way.

He claims a line of Ariosto, consulted like an oracle through a game of numbers, gave him the date: "Tra il fin d'Ottobre e il capo di Novembre". Between October's last day and November's first there's only one moment: midnight. He swears he wasn't superstitious. We'll just note that he obeyed.

On 31 October 1756 he left a letter for the tribunal, dated "Écrit à minuit, sans lumière", written at midnight, without light. He asked not to be punished further for trying, should he fail, and left his belongings to the cellmate who wouldn't come with him.

With another prisoner, the friar Marino Balbi, he made his way out onto the roof. While he was up there, he says, St Mark's bell struck twelve: All Saints' Day had begun. He crossed the lead sheets in the dark, found a dormer window, lowered himself into the building on a rope and ended up in the chancellery. He was out of his cell, but not out of the palace. Dawn found him there, his clothes torn and his knees bloodied.

Did Casanova jump into the canal?

No. He did something far cheekier. He dressed in his best, with a gold-laced hat and a white plume, and bandaged his knees. He looked, he says, like someone coming home from a ball after a long night.

Then, by his own account, he did something rash: he showed himself at a window. A few loafers down in the courtyard spotted a smart gentleman where no one should be and told the keeper of the keys, who assumed he'd locked someone in by mistake and came up to open the door. That rash moment, he'd later say, was what saved him.

Casanova walked straight past him and down the Giants' Staircase, neither slowly nor at a run. Balbi wanted to hide in the church; Casanova refused, convinced that in Venice a church wouldn't shelter a fugitive. He went out through the Porta della Carta, beside the basilica, and across the Piazzetta following his own best advice: look at no one, so that no one looks at you.

At the waterfront he took the first gondola and announced, loudly enough for some fifty boatmen to hear, that he was going to Fusina. He offered a philip, a Spanish coin worth more than the fare. On the water, he changed course for Mestre. Anyone asking after him would look in the wrong place.

Here it isn't only his word. A report from the time, preserved in the Notatori of Gradenigo, confirms the boarding in the Piazzetta and the fake course for Fusina that ended in Mestre. It differs on one detail, whether he shaved, but not on anything important.

So forget the leap from the rooftops into the canal. Casanova left by the front door, on foot.

Fact or legend?

• Fact: the bridge (1614) has two passages and links the palace with the New Prisons; Byron made it famous in 1818. The drowned were laid out by the Ponte della Paglia to be identified. Casanova was held in the Leads from 1755 and escaped on the night of 31 October 1756.
• Unproven explanation: that the name comes from the sighs of prisoners. Nobody knows who used it first.
• His version: the verse, the roof and the staircase come from Casanova himself; a report from the time confirms the boarding and the Fusina trick.
• False: the lovers' bridge and the leap into the canal.
• Our own reading: that the real sighs belonged to the Ponte della Paglia.

Where to hear it

The bridge and its straw-boat neighbour close "St Mark's Square: Basilica, Campanile and Bridge of Sighs", Podtour's free route in Venice: twelve outdoor stops in just under a kilometre, from La Fenice to the waterfront by the Doge's Palace. The last stop, "Sighs, straw and drowned men", is heard just before the Ponte della Paglia.

The escape takes up two consecutive stops on "The Doge's Palace from Outside: Conspiracies, Prisons and Casanova": "The Leads prison and the midnight letter", facing the palace from the waterfront, and "Straight to Fusina, without looking at anyone", in the Piazzetta.

If you're planning your trip, our Venice guide has the practical side covered.

Further reading

• Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Palazzo Ducale, official guide in English (PDF): https://palazzoducale.visitmuve.it/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Guida-Ducale-ENG.pdf
• Giuseppe Tassini, Curiosità veneziane, ovvero Origini delle denominazioni stradali di Venezia, 2nd edn (Venice: Grimaldo, 1872; in Italian). Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_pXcnz0In69IC
• Giacomo Casanova, Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la République de Venise qu'on appelle les Plombs (Leipzig [Prague], 1788; edn with introduction and notes by Charles Samaran, Paris: Bossard, 1922; in French). Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/histoiredemafuit00casa
• George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto IV (1818). Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5131