The narrow lane leading from Venice’s Piazza San Marco -- the Merceria -- has always been crowded. This was once the main street in this city of eroding beauty and remains the shortest route between San Marco and the Ponte di Rialto (Rialto Bridge). That means lots of tourists and designer label stores. And everywhere dozens of places filled with mass-produced miniatures of Carnival masks.
Byron, Browning and Dickens walked this street, as did minor royals from all over Europe. But in the Merceria there is a small tribute to a commoner who performed an uncommon act which altered the fate of Venice.
So despite the crowds I stopped opposite an arch near San Marco and pointed out to my companions a small marble relief above it. It is of Giustina Rosa and she is depicted leaning out of a window as if ready to drop some kind of pot on the heads of those passing below.
And once, she did exactly that.
Giustina was in the right place at the right time -- and that time was June 15 1310, a date carved beneath her image and also set into the pavement beneath the tramping feet of tourists.
Giustina Rosa’s story is an unusual one. Through some instability in nearby Ferrara troops from Venice had occupied that city. Pope Clement V disapproved and gave the Venetian army 10 days to withdraw or Venice would be excommunicated.
Heated arguments broke out in Venice between those who feared the consequences and those who supported the Venetian Doge’s defiance of the Pope. A coup was planned to oust the Doge.
One of the conspirators, Bajamonte Tiepolo, lead his men down the Merceria towards the palace and he was within a few yards of St Mark’s Square when old Giustina stepped into the pages of history. She leaned out her window and dropped a mortar. It hit Tiepolo’s standard-bearer on the head and killed him. Tiepolo’s proud standard fell to the ground.
Tiepolo, seeing some fatalistic symbolism in the moment, panicked and fled back down the Merceria, across the Ponte de Rialto -- knocking it apart behind him -- and holed up in his own district. Concerned about civil disorder as some citizens rallied to hunt down Tiepolo and others rose to his defence, the Doge negotiated a truce with Tiepolo. His home was torn down as part of the deal but at least he survived, unlike one of his co-conspirators who was beheaded.
And Giustina was rewarded. She got a rent-freeze and her family could hang its banner on feast days from that famous window in perpetuity.
Well, perpetuity is a long time and her home -- known as Casa della Grazia del Mortar -- was pulled down over a century ago. But Giustina’s likeness -- that of a broad shouldered old woman wrapped in a cloak and about to let loose her famous mortar -- hovers over foot traffic in the Merceria even today. Not that anybody notices.
Most people are too busy peering into the expensive shops or jostling through the camera-wielding crowds making for San Marco or the Ponte di Rialto to look up and see the image of this uncommon commoner.