Of course, bridges also simply offer a good view: for combatants, for spectators, and ultimately for artists. By the seventeenth century, the ritualized violence of the battagliole had become one of Venice’s hallmark amusements. Their popularity produced, and was reinforced by, written, painted, and printed records: some from Venetians, others by or for the sake of foreigners (Venice had, by then, become a staple stop on the Grand Tour).
