The historic centre of Venice is
made up of 118 islands, most of
which began life as a
micro-community, each with a parish
church or two, and a square for
public meetings. Though many
Venetians maintain a strong
attachment to their particular part
of the city, the autonomy of these
parishes has been eroded since the
days when traffic between them moved
by water. Some 400 bridges now tie
the islands together, forming an
amalgamation that's divided into six
large administrative districts known
as sestieri, three on each side of
the Canal Grande.
The sestiere of San Marco
is the zone where the majority of
the essential sights are clustered,
and is accordingly the most
expensive and most crowded district
of the city. On the east it's
bordered by Castello , and on
the north by Cannaregio -
both of which become more
residential, and poorer and quieter,
the further you go from San Marco.
On the other bank the largest of the
sestieri is Dorsoduro , which
stretches from the fashionable
quarter at the tip of the Canal
Grande, south of the Accademia
gallery, to the docks in the west. Santa
Croce , named after a now
demolished church, roughly follows
the curve of the Canal Grande from
Piazzale Roma to a point just short
of the Rialto, where it joins the
commercially most active of the
districts on this bank - San Polo.
To the uninitiated, the
boundaries of the sestieri can seem
utterly perplexing, and they are of
little use as a means of structuring
a guide. So, although in most
instances this guide uses the name
of a sestiere to indicate broadly
which zone of the city we're in, the
boundaries of our sections have been
chosen for their practicality and do
not, except in the case of San
Marco, follow the city's official
divisions. Most of the sestiere of
Santa Croce, for example, is covered
in the San Polo section, with the
remnant covered in Dorsoduro, as the
sestiere has no focal point for the
visitor and very few sights.
