Os pozzi.

O Século XIX alvoroçou-se com as masmorras do Palácio dos Doges. Dickens visitou-as em Novembro de 1844, e tirou o melhor partido da ocasião:

One cell I saw, in which no man remained for more than four-and-twenty hours; being marked for dead before he entered it. Hard by, another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the confessor came - a monk, brown-robed, and hooded - ghastly in the day, and free bright air, but in the midnight of that murky prison, Hope's extinguisher, and Murder's herald. I had my foot upon the spot, where, at the same dread hour, the shriven prisioner was strangled; and struck my hand upon the guilty door - low browed and stealthy - through which the lumpish sack was carried out into a boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it was death to cast a net.

Nas paredes de algumas celas ainda se podem decifrar as garatujas dos prisioneiros desalentados. Mas convém recordar aqui uma carta de 1833, onde a esposa de Bulwer-Lytton nos explica a longevidade dessas inscrições:

the guide told us they were nearly effaced till Lord Byron had spent two days re-cutting them into the walls.

Byron, em Veneza, merecia um outro blog.

A imagem reproduz um óleo de Luca Carvelaris, de 1720, com uma perspectiva geral do Molo e, à esquerda, a fachada do Palácio dos Doges. No post seguinte darei algumas indicações bibliográficas.