Grand Canal Tour, part 1

Great thoroughfares often seem to meet bad ends: Fifth Avenue comes to grief among junkyards and gasworks over the Harlem River; the Champs-Elysées leads only to the nightmare of La Défense.

The Grand Canal’s shabby demise comes at its northern end, among the causeways, the docks of the Tronchetto, the new people mover and the colossal parking garages of Piazzale Roma.

The first sight is the spanking new, controversial Ponte della Constituzione, perhaps better known as the Ponte Calatrava after its architect, built to link the Piazzale Roma directly with the train station

It affords a good view onto the Giardini Papadopoli, on the confluence of the Grand Canal and Rio Novo. Once party of the long gone monastery of Santa Crose, an English park was commissioned here in 1835 by Teresa Mosconi Papadopoli which was later chopped up in the construction of Piazzale Roma.