Long straight stone fondamenta and plain brick tenements rise to seven storeys in the old Ghetto, with Gothic palazzi facing the Grand Canal.
What Cannaregio looks like
Long straight stone fondamenta run beside the canals, wide enough for a dolly track and usually empty but for a resident or two. Plain brick and stucco buildings rise four or five storeys above the water, their shutters closed against the glare, with arched windows and iron balconies breaking up otherwise flat facades.
Around , the old Ghetto's tenements climb to six and seven storeys, taller than anything else in the sestiere. Five synagogues sit behind ordinary upper floor windows here, unmarked from the street, the oldest the Scuola Grande Tedesca from 1528. A few streets north, a plaque on a corner building names , beside a weathered stone medallion and a Gothic arched window set into the old plaster.
The Grand Canal side looks different. Pale stone palazzi with Gothic quatrefoil windows, colonnaded ground floors and iron balconies face the water around and the bend toward Rialto, gondolas and small boats tied to striped mooring poles along the bank.
, the wide nineteenth century street cut through the sestiere toward the railway station, is lined with shops and bars under its arcades. Partway along it, the neo-Gothic facade of Teatro Italia still reads over the door, a cinema built in 1916 that now opens onto the aisles of a supermarket.
Shot in Cannaregio
For Moonraker, the production filmed two sections of canal a few hundred metres apart, the fondamenta beside the Misericordia for a meeting between Bond and Dr. Goodhead and the canal by Madonna dell'Orto for the gondola chase that follows. The restaurant where Don't Look Now staged its own canalside scene, near Ponte Scalzi, still serves today at the same address. It is a walk of about fifteen minutes south toward the station.
Moonraker
Both scenes play the same stretch of canal as itself, a few hundred metres apart on either side of Campo dei Mori.
Moonraker, 1979
Bond and Dr. Goodhead meet here beside the canal while both are investigating Hugo Drax, close by Ponte San Marziale. The production shot the meeting on the fondamenta itself, the same stone walkway that runs beside the Misericordia today.
Moonraker, 1979
The gondola chase that follows the canal meeting continues along the , past the church beside the water. This reach of it, toward Fondamenta Gasparo Contarini, is the same quiet fondamenta the production found here in 1979.
What Cannaregio can double for
Korčula, Croatia
Korčula's old town was built under Venetian rule, and its carved Gothic windows and stone lions are the real Venetian vocabulary rather than a copy. The town sits on a walled peninsula with no internal canals, so a close frame on a doorway or a window works far better than a wide shot that would show the street plan or the open sea. Try searching carved Gothic windows now.
Sint-Anna in Bruges, Belgium
Sint-Anna's quieter canals run past plain brick cottages and small bridges away from the main square, close in scale to Cannaregio's own back canals. Stepped gables and dormers on Bruges rooflines are a Flemish giveaway in a wide shot, so the camera should stay low on the brickwork and the water rather than climbing to the skyline. Try searching plain brick canal cottages now.
