Ponte delle Tette (Bridge of the Tits), Venice

The name of this modest little crossing, the Bridge of the Tits, is entirely literal. You’re standing in what was once Venice’s officially sanctioned red-light district of San Cassiano, where public morality and public display were managed with the same bureaucratic enthusiasm as trade or taxes. The bridge earned its reputation because prostitutes were encouraged—quite openly—to bare their chests here, using visual persuasion to attract clients and, more pointedly, to redirect men suspected of preferring other men.

The Venetian Republic, never shy about regulation, took this policy seriously. Prostitutes were permitted to use lanterns after dark to illuminate their breasts, turning the bridge into a kind of state-approved advertising platform. At times, authorities even paid women to line up across the bridge, topless, ensuring there was no ambiguity about who was on offer—and conveniently excluding transvestite sex workers in the process. It was social engineering, Venetian-style: pragmatic, intrusive, and oddly methodical...

Prostitution itself had been legalized and confined to specific districts by the early sixteenth century, making Venice one of the first European cities to regulate sex work at a civic level. Within that system, the Bridge of the Tits became both a boundary and a stage, where desire, control, and spectacle intersected in full view.

And yes—Casanova knew this bridge well. For him, it was not just a shortcut but a hunting ground, part of a city where seduction unfolded in plain sight and temptation was woven into daily life. Here, Venice drops all pretense: pleasure was managed, morality negotiated, and even vice had office hours...