The Dogana da Mar, or (Customs of the Sea), beautifully placed in front of the church of Salute, at the tip of Zattere in Venice Italy.
Punta della Dogana is now an art museum in Venice’s old customs building, the Dogana da Mar.
It also refers to the triangular area of Venice where the Grand Canal meets the Giudecca Canal, and its collection of buildings: Santa Maria della Salute, Patriarchal Seminary of Venice, and Dogana da Mar at the triangle’s tip.
The point was once used for docking and customs as early as, the beginning of the 15th century.
The arcade styles reflect their construction in different eras.
Atop the building are statues of Atlas, built to represent the supremacy of the Republic of Venice.
Two imgages of Atlas carry a globe on their backs while at the top of it ,stands Dogana da Mar (Lady Fortune), the 17th-century statue which turns in the wind.
This golden ensemble also to served as a lighthouse for the boats entering San Marco.
Fortune turns with the wind and, as it was the Dogana da Mar, it is ,of course the sail she holds in her hands that helps transform the role of weather vane to agile foot, just like the golden angel located at the top of Campanile Saint-Marco ,which also turns depending on the direction of the wind.
The bronze sculptures of Atlantis and Fortune were made by Bernardo Falcone and all, buildings and sculptures were completed in 1677 .
Santa Maria della Salute (Saint Mary of Health), commonly known simply as the Salute, is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica located at Punta della Dogana in the Dorsoduro sestiere of the city of Venice, Italy.
It stands on the narrow finger of Punta della Dogana, between the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal, at the Bacino di San Marco, making the church visible when entering the Piazza San Marco from the water. The Salute is part of the parish of the Gesuati and is the most recent of the so-called plague churches.
This map demonstrates the network effect of plague and trade on the Lazzaretto Islands, which in the 15th century used as plague quarantine areas in an effort to prevent the spread of the Black Death, and are a prime example of ways in which the Rialto region used the minor islands as places of service to the greater needs of the city.
First, Lazzaretto Vecchio was converted from a monastery to a plague quarantine center, and later, as it reached capacity, Lazzaretto Nuovo was added.
This developed into a complex system of defense– incoming ships were directed to Lazzaretto Nuovo, where the goods were sorted and fumigated, and passengers screened for disease.
Those that were sick were sent to Lazzaretto Vecchio, where they most likely died in quantities of as many as 500 per day.
All of this contributed to a culture of disease and health that tied Venice to the rest of Europe.
The plagued people were shipped off to Poveglia Island, a small, secluded land mass that floats between Venice and Lido.
There, people lived out the last of their lives together until they died.
Since the island already reeked of death, the next time an epidemic came along, barely alive bodies were dumped there and burned or buried in mass graves.
Images of the plague found their way to France but were linked spatially to places on Venice, fears of Vampirism ran rampant, and increasingly drastic measures were taken to punish quarantine breakers.
Simultaneously, the success of health on the islands resulted in the construction of several churches, Santa Maria Salute and Il Redentore, and the concerted focus on health led to the development of several hospitals on the mainland, most notably the one in the Scuola de San Marco.
In 1630, Venice experienced an unusually devastating outbreak of the plague. As a votive offering for the city’s deliverance from the pestilence, the Republic of Venice vowed to build and dedicate a church to Our Lady of Health (or of Deliverance, Italian: Salute).
The church was designed in the then fashionable baroque style by Baldassare Longhena, who studied under the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi. Construction began in 1631. Most of the objects of art housed in the church bear references to the Black Death.
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The dome of the Salute was an important addition to the Venice skyline and soon became emblematic of the city, inspiring artists like Canaletto, J. M. W. Turner, John Singer Sargent, and the Venetian artist Francesco Guardi.
Originally, the general customs of Venice was located at the Castello, next to the entrance to Arsenal.
But in 1414 it was found this custom’s house was no longer sufficient to handle the increasing quantity of goods arriving at Venice.
It was decided not only to move the customs services but also to split them into Land Customs and Sea Customs.
The land customs post was installed Riva del Vin in Rialto, while the sea customs post, in charge of the purely maritime trade, was installed at the tip of the Dorsoduro, facing San Marco and Bacino of San Marco where arrived a large part of the maritime traffic.
By the 15th century, Venice had created a permanent Ministry of Health that ran the operations on the Lazzarettos.
They managed the flow of people and goods between Nuovo, Vecchio and Venice and were given special administrative powers during times of plague.
Health ministers worked in conjunction with doctors who would not only make inspections of incoming ships and cargo, but also of citizens of Venice if plague was discovered on the island.
At dawn each day, health inspectors would arrive on Nuovo to conduct an examination of everyone on the island which mainly consisted of the sick who were then sent to Vecchio, the healthy who had finished their quarantine, or the new arrivals on the island to beigin quarantine.
Daily deliveries of water and food were made during plague times. When the island had a larger population (up to 4000), it could no longer solely support them with its wells and vegetable gardens.
The efforts were funded in large part by the Ministry of the Salt who would pay all doctors, as well, as feed and transport any who were sent to Lazzaretto Nuovo for the full 22-day period of their quarantine.
The cultural impact of the plague lives on in Venice as expressed by some of the traditional masks of Carnival.
Plague doctors wore outfits like that shown in the picture below – long black robes, hats, spectacles, and a “beak” which was filled with vinegar.
Venetians believed that illness was spread by ‘bad air’ and that the vinegar would prevent the doctors from exposure.
In the meantime, just behind the Dogana da Mar, the church of La Salute, a magnificent baroque work by the architect Baldassare Longhena, was being completed.
Also, for the sake of aesthetics, it was decided to rebuild a new Sea Customs that is in harmony with the architecture of the new church.
A competition was launched, in which Longhena took part, careful to preserve the architectural perspective of his church, as well as another architect, then unknown in Venice, Giuseppe Benoni .
The vote between the two projects was tight, Benoni winning only by 6 votes against 5.
Benoni proposed a more original project.
Today, Lazzaretto Nuovo is managed by an Archaeology Club which runs camps in the summer and offers tours to the public on Saturdays and Sundays between April and October.
The Dogana da Mar and her beautiful whirling Fortune, inspired many writers.