Campo san Polo is the largest Campo in Venice; this is because Piazza san Marco, though definitely bigger, is not a campo, which in Italian means field. Indeed, all the campi you walk through in Venice were once used as vegetable gardens and more often for animal pasture; rewind the clock to the 19th century and you would have seen donkeys, sheep and hen roaming about here.
Given its size, in the middle-ages san Polo became a great venue for sporting events, the most famous of all being the bull-chase, where people would chase an agry bull around, not unlike the Spanish corrida; deaths were not uncommon, and in 1611 the State put a stop to this, as can be seen from a plaque on the side of the church condemning public games in the square.
