PEOPLE AND PLACES: DAY TEN
Campo San Salvatore and The Safehouse
The Campo is located in the northern area of San Marco, just a couple of minutes from the Rialto Bridge and located well inside Soranzo's power base in the city. Despite a lull in the number of fellow tourists that morning, the square felt strangely claustrophobic, as if the stonework was holding its breath in anticipation of something happening.
The buildings surrounding the square, including the church that Malin stands in front of as he waits for his co-conspiator, are pretty impressive examples of mid-Renaissance urban architecture, retaining all of their grandeur despite, in this case, being repurposed as a cinema and wrapped in a layer of scaffolding.
But hey, all is not lost, to the right of the entrance on the shot below - what's that? A bin, you say? Result!
In our subsequent attempt to follow in Malin's footsteps from this point, we headed off in the direction of the building where Soranzo and Malin have a serious discussion about the state of their plans. We were fine when it came to finding the Ponte Dei Fuseri, but managed to seriously lose our bearings when confronted with the narrow intersecting alleys that lay between the bridge and his safe house.
As you can see from the final two pictures below, we had wandered into what, by Venetian standards, were a maze of pretty unsalubrious back alleys. I made a mental note not to come back here after dark, for fear of becoming prey to that redcloaked gargoylefreak in "Don't Look Now".
It wasn't difficult to imagine the two men, accompanied by Soranzo's bodyguard, leaving the more populated areas of the city behind to pursue their secret rendezvous.
Note: this might also explain the partial failure Uberto and Sclavo to closely follow their surveillance targets later in the novel.
