Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini: Wells, Patere and Risi e Bisi
Why is it significant?
Enter a small, perfectly enclosed campo ringed by houses with Gothic windows, a stone well-head in the middle and, set into the walls, round carved medallions of birds and beasts. If you want to know what a Venetian square looked like in the Middle Ages, this is about as close as you can get.
Key Facts
| Place | Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini: Wells, Patere and Risi e Bisi |
|---|---|
| Address | Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini, Santa Croce, 30135 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.43970, 12.33040 |
| Part of Walk | Fish, Wine and Cicchetti: Venice's Rialto Markets and the Bacari of San Polo |
| Generated | Generated |
Enter a small, perfectly enclosed campo ringed by houses with Gothic windows, a stone well-head in the middle and, set into the walls, round carved medallions of birds and beasts. If you want to know what a Venetian square looked like in the Middle Ages, this is about as close as you can get.
Those round medallions are called patere, Byzantine-style reliefs that Venetians set into their façades for decoration and, some say, for good luck. The well-head is not really a well at all: Venice has no fresh springs. Under a campo like this lies a cistern, where rainwater from the roofs ran through layers of sand to be filtered and stored, and the well was where families came, bucket in hand, to draw it.
Since we are walking through food, let us talk about the dish that once opened the spring at the very top of Venetian society: risi e bisi, rice and peas. On the feast of Saint Mark, the twenty-fifth of April, the doge was served it with the first fresh peas from the lagoon gardens. It is neither soup nor risotto but something in between, often cooked with a broth made from the pea pods themselves, so that it tastes intensely green.
There was a political taste to it too. The doge eating the peas of the lagoon was a reminder that the Republic could feed itself from its own islands and gardens, even while its ships were bringing pepper, sugar and silk from the other end of the known world. Simple ingredients, cooked at exactly the right moment of the year: that is the whole philosophy of Venetian cooking.
Take a moment by the well-head. Early in the morning this campo belongs only to the people who live around it, and you can hear a radio through an open window and a cat on a sill. Then leave by the northern side and walk toward the Grand Canal, where a white Baroque church looks out across the water.