Bridge of Sighs Bridge of Sighs The Bridge of Sighs (Italian and ) is a bridge located in Venice, northern Italy. The enclosed bridge is made of white limestone, has windows with stone bars, passes over the Rio di Palazzo, and connects the New Prison ("Prigioni Nuove") to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace. It was designed by Antonio Contino (whose uncle Antonio da Ponte had designed the Rialto Bridge) and was built in 1600. The view from the Bridge of Sighs was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment. The bridge's name, given by Lord Byron as
Waterloo Bridge on the bridge. In 1844 Thomas Hood wrote the poem "The Bridge of Sighs", which concerns the suicide of a prostitute there. Paintings of the bridge were created by the French Impressionist Claude Monet and the English Romantic John Constable. The bridge was nationalised in 1878 and placed under the control of the Metropolitan Board of Works, which removed the toll from it. Michael Faraday tried in 1832 to measure the potential difference between each side of the bridge caused by the ebbing salt water flowing through the Earth's magnetic field. See magnetohydrodynamics. From 1884 serious problems were found in