When they invented prisons in Venice – WWWITALIA
Another appointment with the column THE LORD OF NIGHT. To read the previous articles just click HERE.
Among the most popular Venetian tourist destinations is the solemn building of the New Prisons, the world’s first example of a structure dedicated exclusively to detention.
Improvised prisons in structures created for other purposes
Until the end of the Renaissance, governments everywhere used to adapt structures created for other purposes to prisons and continue to do so also in subsequent periods. An example for all, the Bastille of Paris, born between 1367 and 1382 as a fortress to defend the city walls at the Sant’Antonio gate, later transformed into a prison and demolished by the Parisian people on 14 July 1789, was then in minimal part still used as a prison.
The hard principle was that the guilty atoned for the guilt in the most atrocious way, when not on the gallows. Prisons were truly infamous places where prisoners live in inhumane conditions, in humid, dark environments and with zero hygiene. They hardly survived until release, if it ever happened.
The prisons of the Doge’s Palace
Venice was no exception with the use of the ground floor and mezzanine of the Doge’s Palace, trying to recover all the available spaces, even the basement. In certain slums with so little space, the inmates find it hard to stretch their legs or stand up straight.
Even the so-called cells called “Prisons of the Lords Chiefs”, later known as “Wells”, had the sad reputation of being placed under the water level. Instead, they were a ground floor and probably owe the undeserved reputation to access via a narrow and dark staircase of sixteen steps. Some had windows overlooking the Rio di Palazzo, others, called “orbe”, were dark and damp.
Together with those of the “Piombi” in the attic, where, due to this material used as a roof, you suffer from the cold in winter and the worst heat wave in summer, they were intended to welcome the guests of the Council of Ten and the Inquisitors of State , but not all. Certainly they were two secret cells of the Wells, called “gardens”.
Last century, in cell number 10 of the Wells during a restoration, under a blanket of battered lime, graffiti depicting the Virgin with child surrounded by saints, a crucified Christ and more came out. They then turned out to be frescoes, the work of a certain Riccardo Perucolo in prison by order of the Holy Office, as he was suspected of Lutheran heresy. He had painted them to convince the judges of his good faith in him, but, after various vicissitudes, he will end up at the stake twenty years later in Conegliano because he really was a Lutheran.
From the slums of Piombi and Pozzi it was not possible to have contact with the outside, while the others under the loggia of the building were equipped with large windows closed by bars and facing the public square.
Treatment of prisoners
Apart from the aforementioned cells of the Pozzi and Piombi, compared to the rest of the world, the prisons of the Serenissima were almost a living room.
Receivers were allowed to entertain freely with those who were out, ask for moral and material comfort, even ask for alms to pay the bill for the unwanted stay. Of such liberality, a serenade by virtuous musicians offered by family members to comfort this Antonio Grimani, who was in prison awaiting trial, remained memorable.
Foreign chroniclers had noted the humanity of the Venetian prisons where inmates dedicated themselves to crafts, played dice or chess, chatted with friends and relatives at the gates, or … organized escape plans, because every prison is still a prison. Even from those of the Doge’s Palace there were evasions, at times sensational, even mass evasions with the people taking the part of the fugitives.
Wide-ranging also in matters of sexual needs, tolerance that even provided for the evacuation of cells and guardhouses to allow prisoners to meet with wives and friends. Moreover, the imprisonment was almost promiscuous.
The perpetrators of the most serious crimes were locked up in the so-called “orbe” cells, dark and isolated, and with the chaining of hands or feet to the stocks in cases of recognized danger. Regarding, however, for debts and for those who arise spontaneously following the order of comparison.
For a certain period, some people had been granted freedom of movement within the Marciana area bounded by the canals. It was inevitable that someone had taken the opportunity to become a wild bird, so much so that, towards the middle of the 16th century, there was a license that anyone could kill escaped persons with impunity.
A case beyond tolerable
Thanks to the diarist Marin Sanudo (1466 – 1536) the banquets of the scribe Zuane Ferman will remain in the annals. Giovanni Batochio prisons.
He let him go out at night and come back with everything he needed to happily feast with women of impeccable morality. Unfortunately, the good life behind bars only lasted a handful of days. In fact, the matter had reached the ears of the authorities. Marco Zambotto, who performed the functions of “Missier Grande”, that is to say a kind of collector of all the information gathered by the “zaffi”, that is the confidants of the police, was ordered to guard the doors of the prisons during the night.
The next morning Ferman, Batochio and two meritorious women were arrested, who will be given a dose of twenty whips in the public square. The captain’s rank will be revoked and sent into exile in Candia, that is Crete, for five years, while Ferman already had his fine sentence to serve and without revelry.
Justice helps inmates
Considerable effort was made to avoid the continuation of undue imprisonment, to ensure reminders was the state of the trials and to verify the situation.
Various magistracies were called to watch over the prisons and listen to the complaints of inmates, the omnipresent Avogadori di Comun in the first place, followed by the leaders of the Quarantia Criminal and the “advocate of the poor prixoni”, an official obliged to visit the prisons, including the sestiere cells, called “cameroti”, and take care of the needs of the flowers, collect their complaints and plead their rights before the courts. There were two who, with a quarterly rotation, also had to assist those in need of patronage, one at the Quarantia and the second at the other magistracies dealing with criminal matters.
The three heads of the Council of Ten watch over the Piombi and Pozzi cells.
During the trials the accused, if he could not afford a lawyer who abounded in Venice, was assisted by an official defender, because the defense of the accused was understood as an essential cornerstone of the judicial system, without exception.
The complaints of the guardians
In the long run, between crowding in spaces obtained at best and the danger of fires caused by fires being burnt to heat up, putting the above room of the Maggior Consiglio at risk, if not the entire building, the situation had become unsustainable.
Mostly the overseers, together with the pleas because their meager wages had increased, complained of the fatigue of carrying out their service in a dramatically inadequate structure, forced to quell fights where the dead sometimes escaped, “keeping them rei in cepi” if dangerous, prevent escapes and cooperate with interrogations. This was carried out mainly in leading the accused to the presence of the judges who, if he did not sing with the good humor, subjected him to the “stretches of rope”. After that, the guards were forced to help the doctors to “straighten the brazi”, if ever it was possible to pose the consequence of that devastating torture. This involved tying the unfortunate’s wrists behind his back and hoisting him with a rope hanging from the ceiling and then letting him fall almost to the ground. I can not stand it anymore.
The New Prisons project
Recognizing the urgency of the situation, it was decided for a drastic and decisive intervention with the construction of the new prison in an area adjacent to the Doge’s Palace and divided from this by the homonymous river. The first resolution of the Council of X dates back to March 1563 and provided for a mono functional structure, that is, used only for detention purposes as no one in the world had ever thought of before. Maximum time allowed “no later than 1610”, but the times will exceed by a few years.
Several architects will get their hands on the design and construction: Antonio da Ponte the first together with Zamaria dai Piombi, then Tommaso and Antonio Contin, author of the so-called “Bridge of Sighs” that connects the new prison block with Palazzo Ducale, and finally Bartolomeo Manopola . The result will be a building with austere and solemn shapes overlooking the Riva degli Schiavoni, with a deep porch on the ground floor and large large windows on the first floor where the Lords of Night, magistrates and police chiefs to whom it was public order in the city was entrusted and more.
The initial intention to improve the lives of the best with larger, well ventilated and illuminated cells will be almost entirely realized, except for some sections of the building, such as the groups of cells arranged inward. Particularly critical is the liveability of the sectors with a patrol corridor along the four sides. Each cell was lined with crossed larch wood boards and thickly nailed to the walls, floor and vault.
Transfer of
The construction site will continue until 1614 with the construction of the so-called “Bridge of Sighs”, a name that does not refer to the sighs of lovers who today photograph it from the Ponte della Paglia, as some might think. Instead, it was those of the goers who went to trial and then returned to the cell to serve their sentence. In fact, the bridge is divided into two corridors from which poor people can dare to take a look outside, at the Rio di Palazzo on one side and at the Ponte della Paglia that separates the San Marco and Castello districts where the Prisons stand. New.
Already during the work in progress, the available cells will gradually be activated. So that at the end of 1601 most of the people turned out to be “accommodates in the” very new “prisons; in 1603 the prisoners who were still in the Doge’s Palace had all been moved and the spaces freed destined for other offices. Piombi, Pozzi and a cell on the floor of the armory, called “Torresella”, remained in operation because the prisoners had given the most curious and picturesque names to the cells: “Liona”, “Fresca Zoia”, “Armamento” and so on. , names that were carried behind the New Prisons.
The New Prisons, which once completed will have 400 seats, will remain in operation until 1919, surviving the Serenissima, the French and Austrian dominations and a piece of the Kingdom of Italy.
The article was also published on the author’s website – https://www.ilsignoredinotte.it/prigioni-nuovi.html
In the photos: two pictures of the interiors taken by the author, and an overview of the place taken from the site zero.eu with the New Prisons on the right, the Bridge of Sighs in the center and the Ponte della Paglia at the bottom, the Doge’s Palace on the left.
The quote
Arriving out of breath, the guards opened a passage for him in the crowd that besieged the door: those who asked for information on the summons, who had been summoned, those in the mood for protests or those who were simply there to snoop. The lawyers stand out from the crowd for their pompous demeanor, elegant clothes and above all for their great talk. Barbarigo did not bother to respond to greetings, much less to those of the latter, he according to people unbearable and rowdy.
The Lord of the Night. A detective story in Venice in 1605, a novel by Gustavo Vitali (2020)