You are now on the Ponte della Paglia, the bridge of Hay, where boats would drop off stacks of hay for the horses’ stables inside the Palazzo Ducale on the ground floor. Which is also where, until the 16th century, the city’s prisons were located; and so for extra security the doge of the time had the prisons moved outside, to the building on your right, which was constructed for that purpose. In 1600, therefore, a bridge had to be built to connect the Doge’s Palace and the Prisons: the Ponte dei Sospiri, the Bridge of Sighs. Allegedly, the newly-judged convicts walking to their darkened cell, would look out from the window-gaps to the lagoon for one last time and sigh.
