The Arsenale Gate and the Lion with Viking Runes
Why is it significant?
Stop on the little bridge over the canal and face two brick towers with battlements guarding a water gate, and beside them a triumphal arch in stone, crowned by a winged lion.
Key Facts
| Place | The Arsenale Gate and the Lion with Viking Runes |
|---|---|
| Address | Campo de l'Arsenal, Castello, 30122 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.43490, 12.35010 |
| Part of Walk | Lions, Shipyards and Saints: Venice's Castello and the Arsenale Beyond the Crowds |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop on the little bridge over the canal and face two brick towers with battlements guarding a water gate, and beside them a triumphal arch in stone, crowned by a winged lion. In front of the arch sits a row of marble lions of very different sizes and moods, like a family photograph that nobody planned.
Behind those walls lay the Arsenale, by tradition founded in 1104, and for centuries the largest industrial complex in Europe. At its height thousands of workers, the arsenalotti, built and fitted out the galleys of the Republic in something close to an assembly line, the hull moving past warehouses that handed out oars, ropes and weapons one after another. Dante saw it at work and put it into his Inferno, comparing a lake of boiling pitch in hell to the pitch the Venetians boiled here in winter to caulk their ships.
The stone gateway, the Porta Magna, dates from around 1460 and is often called the first Renaissance structure in Venice, its columns taken from an older, ancient building. The story goes that when King Henri the Third of France visited in 1574, the arsenalotti assembled an entire galley while he sat at dinner.
Now the lions. The two largest came from Greece in 1687, trophies of Francesco Morosini, whose army besieged Athens that year, when a Venetian shell hit the Ottoman gunpowder stored in the Parthenon and blew it apart. The tall seated lion once guarded the harbour of Piraeus. Look closely at its shoulders and flanks: worn, snake-like ribbons are carved there, with runes inside them.
Most scholars think those runes were cut in the eleventh century by Scandinavian warriors of the Varangian guard who served the Byzantine emperor... Vikings leaving graffiti on a Greek lion that ended up in Venice. Wind and rain have erased most of the words. Now follow the canal down to the waterfront, turn left, and stop at the broad building on the corner, where the Republic kept its grain and the navy now keeps its memories.