1. "Ma questa sola posta nel mezzo dell'acque, non ha cosa in terra alla quale si possa paragonare" (Sansovino, Venezia città nobilissima et singolare, 3v).


2. Abraham Moles and Elisabeth Rohmer, Labyrinthes du vécu: L'espace: matière d'actions (Paris: 1982), 48-49.


3. Robert Davis, The War of the Fists (Oxford: 1994), 14-15.


4. Davis, War of the Fists , 13.


5. Davis, War of the Fists , 5.


6. Once the modern equivalent, a freeway, is completed, it becomes the expected route, and drivers will travel some distance out of their way in order to use the freeway rather than the street system.


7. Crouzet-Pavan, "Sopre le Acque Salse."


8. See Dennis Romano, "Gender and the Urban Geography of Renaissance Venice," Journal of Social History 23/2 (1989), 339-53. See my discussion of this gendering in terms of the use of neighborhood spaces in chapter II.


9. The Ca' d'Oro, for example, has an androne that is directly accessible both from the water and from the courtyard that opens straight onto the street.