On the bridge of San Cancel, in the Cannaregio Sestiere, two mysterious iron hooks resist. Today they bring luck, but according to legend they served to exhibit the remains of the squirts. A silent corner that tells the darkest Venice.
In the heart of Venice, in the Cannaregio district, there is the San Cancel bridge that crosses the Rio dei Santi Apostoli. Before the new foundations in the 16th century were built, near the bridge, the ferries to Murano, Burano and San Michele, the island where the city cemetery is landed. The toponym of sotoportego of the ferry remained over the centuries, even when the San Cancelian bridge was restored in 1868. A short distance from these historical places, lived and died the great Tiziano Vecellio and the Strozzi family exiled from Florence was established there. The bridge is not only famous from an architectural point of view, but also to be the protagonist of a very widespread legend among the Venetians. To one of the extremes of the stone structure and bricks, a careful eye can see two unusual objects. Bunned on two sides in a corner column of a sotoportego house you can see two old rusty iron hooks. It is not uncommon to see the passers -by approaching the two hooks to touch them and then continue the journey towards the bridge. The Venetians say that the gesture brings luck. The less fortune had those who according to legend were exposed to the public after death in this place. At the end of the San Cancel Ponte, the squared bodies of the sentenced to capital sentenced to be made to four pieces from the executioner would have been hung on the hooks. Two other hooks would have been affixed to the “foundations of the Squartai” near the Tolentini camp, but there is no trace of the latter. The reason why the hooks were in different places in Venice was due to the fact that the mitigated members of the condemned had to be exposed to the four cardinal points and look towards Padua, Chioggia, Mestre and the Lido.
