Campo Santa Margherita

About this place

On the face of a small building standing alone in the middle of the square, a marble slab still lists the minimum length at which each kind of fish could legally be sold — a conservation law from the days of the Republic, cut into stone and never erased. Below it, a fish counter still opens most mornings. That is Campo Santa Margherita in one sentence: a square that never turned into a shop window, and still goes to work. It sits in Dorsoduro, roughly oblong but ragged at the edges, and at some 8,000 square metres it is one of the largest open spaces in the city. Ca' Foscari university buildings are a minute away, so by day the campo is a mix of students cutting across between lectures, residents heading home with vegetables, and children kicking a ball in the kind of open ground that barely exists in a city made of narrow alleys and bridges. The market is a handful of fish and vegetable stalls in the morning rather than anything on the scale of Rialto, and there are no food stalls on Sunday. This is one of very few places in central Venice where locals visibly outnumber visitors. At dusk it changes completely. Bars push their tables out and people drink standing in the open, because the price here is among the lowest in central Venice — a spritz is often around three or four euros, a fraction of what you pay ten minutes' walk away. The crowd is young and it stays loud late, so much so that the city names this square specifically in the seasonal ordinances that cap music and serving hours in its nightlife zones, after years of complaints from residents. Take that as practical advice: if you are choosing a hotel and you like to sleep early, stay a bridge or two off the square. Do not come looking for a monument, because nothing in the campo is ticketed. The church of Santa Margherita still stands, but it is now a Ca' Foscari auditorium that opens only for events, and its bell tower is a stump — the upper part pulled down in 1808 as unsafe. The genuinely worthwhile paid sight is the Scuola Grande dei Carmini with its Tiepolo ceiling canvases, a step off the southern end of the square. Entry to the campo is free and permanent, the ground is completely flat and there are benches, which makes it easy with a pushchair or with older relatives, though the bridges you cross to reach it still cost you a few steps. The nearest vaporetto is Ca' Rezzonico on line 1. Several kebab and takeaway pizza places ring the square, some of them halal — ask before ordering. There is no mosque on the historic islands; the nearest large Islamic centre is in Marghera on the mainland.