Fondamenta degli Ormesini & della Misericordia
Why is it significant?
On the Fondamenta degli Ormesini the mood changes completely. Tables spill out along the water, laundry flaps from the windows above, and moored boats rock gently with their names painted on the bows.
Key Facts
| Place | Fondamenta degli Ormesini & della Misericordia |
|---|---|
| Address | Fondamenta degli Ormesini, Cannaregio, 30121 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.44560, 12.32900 |
| Part of Walk | Venice Beyond the Crowds: Cannaregio and the Jewish Ghetto |
| Generated | Generated |
On the Fondamenta degli Ormesini the mood changes completely. Tables spill out along the water, laundry flaps from the windows above, and moored boats rock gently with their names painted on the bows. On a summer evening, half of Cannaregio seems to come here to drink a spritz with its feet almost in the canal.
The name sounds exotic because it is. Ormesini were a kind of light silk cloth, and the word is usually traced back to Hormuz, the Persian Gulf port on the old trade routes... the weavers and dealers of this cloth seem to have left their name on the quay. Further east the same waterfront becomes the Fondamenta della Misericordia, named after an old abbey. Together they make one of the longest straight walks in Venice, with no Grand Canal views and hardly a monument, which is exactly why locals love it.
Learn two words before you sit down. A cicchetto is a small bite: bread topped with salt cod whipped into cream, a fried meatball, or sardines in sweet and sour onions, sarde in saor. And an ombra is a small glass of wine. Ombra means shadow, and the story goes that wine sellers in Piazza San Marco moved their stalls around the square following the shadow of the bell tower to keep the wine cool... so asking for an ombra meant asking for a glass from the shade.
The canal you are sitting beside is also the reason this fondamenta sometimes disappears. In November 2019 an exceptional high tide reached 187 centimetres, the second highest ever recorded after the flood of 1966, and canals like this one poured into ground floors across the city. Since October 2020 the MOSE barriers at the lagoon inlets have been raised against the worst tides, and quays like this stay dry far more often than before.
Enjoy the light on the water for a moment. Then turn away from the canal and head north through the quiet calli, over another canal or two, to a lonely church standing on its own little campo near the edge of the lagoon.