Campo San Stin

Campo San Stin is a quiet neighborhood square in San Polo, its name a corruption of an older, vanished church rather than a saint most visitors will recognize. A 16th-century well anchors the square, still surrounded by the low houses and jutting upper floors typical of an ordinary Venetian gathering place, just steps from the grander Frari basilica and the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista.

This is a residential square with no visitor economy at all. Nobody here is selling anything, which also means nobody here has any reason to tolerate a crowd, and the ordinary quiet is the neighbourhood's rather than an amenity.

Children play in Venetian campi, and this is one of the squares where they still do. It is their ground before it is anyone's viewpoint.

The 16th-century wellhead carries an inscription recording that Jacobus Barbaro paid for it for the common use of everyone living around the square. It is worth reading and worth not sitting on.

Squares like this are what the visitor pressure around the Frari displaces. Spending a few minutes here rather than adding to the queue two streets away is the whole of what can usefully be done.

Campo San Stin is in the San Polo district, a short walk from the Basilica dei Frari and the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, making it an easy stop for anyone visiting either of those larger sites.

There is nothing here to open or close. The campo is public ground with no ticket, no hours and no interior, so the only question is light and company.

It is quiet in every season and at every hour, which is the point of coming. Even in August the square holds a few residents and almost no one else, while the Frari two minutes away is at capacity.

Morning light reaches the wellhead and the carved dedication most usefully; by afternoon the surrounding houses put most of the square into shade, which suits the barbacani overhead but not the inscription.

It works best as a pause rather than a destination -- five minutes between the Frari and San Rocco, taken deliberately, rather than a walk made for its own sake.