We went from Basilica San Marco to get gelato before heading to a place I lucked into finding on the internet. . .the Contarini del Bovolo staircase.
We had walked past the gelato place the first night on our way to dinner at Antico Dolo (a cute place with good food, but not a “must go to”) and noted the length of the line. Gelatoteca Suso is definitely the place to go for gelato. Afterwards, I checked it out online – 4.5 on TripAdvisor, and 4.7 on Yelp. More importantly, it’s a 5.0 on Bolger. It was fantastic. Definitely worth waiting in a line for – and the line moves quickly. Despite knowing they serve great gelato, the staff is very nice.
Honestly, I don’t remember what rabbit hole I went down to find the Contarini del Bovolo staircase, but I’m glad I did. I won’t say I did an exhaustive search for cool things to see that we hadn’t seen in Venice, because we already had a pretty good list of old and new things to do.
Apparently, the Contarini del Bovolo staircase has not been open to the public very long, as a friend commented on my Facebook photo of it that he didn’t know it was open to the public, because it wasn’t open when he was in Venice not long before COVID.
I’ll let Wikipedia tell the details:
“The Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo (also called the Palazzo Contarini Minelli dal Bovolo) is a small palazzo in Venice, Italy, best known for its external multi-arch spiral staircase known as the Scala Contarini del Bovolo (literally, "of the snail").[1]
The palazzo is located in a small, less-travelled calle (street) near Campo Manin, about half-way between Campo San Bartolo, at the foot of the Rialto, and Campo Santo Stefano.
The staircase leads to an arcade, providing an impressive view of the city roof-tops.
This palazzo has been visitable since February 2016.”
Wikipedia also reports that the grand staircase was added in 1499.
Climbing to the top afforded us wonderful views of Venice, where we saw too many church and house towers to count.
Our friend Derek Baxter, who wrote an enjoyable read called “In Pursuit of Jefferson: Traveling Through Europe With The Most Perplexing Founding Father,” likes to highlight Jefferson’s advice to go to the highest vantage point in a town to get an overview of the town.
Well, that’s easy advice to follow in Venice. Not only can you go up the Campanile, which is the highest point in the city, there are multiple ways to take in the glory that are the islands, and waters, surrounding Venice.
Us, and the Contarini del
Bovolo. The Contarini
is the cool staircase
behind us.
The visit doesn’t take long, and it’s not that far a walk from Piazza San Marco, but it’s definitely worth it. We ordered tickets in advance, which is a good thing, because all tickets were sold out for our time slot (5pm).
A view from the top of both the
Campanile and the onion domes
of the Basilica of St. Mark's.
The stunning staircase.
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