The Bridge of Sighs was built in 1600 in the Baroque style. It joins the ancient prisons and Hall of Justice in the Palazzo Ducale, to the newer 16th-century prisons on the other side of the Rio del Palazzo. Its name comes from the tortured sighs supposedly breathed by despairing prisoners. The bridge is split into two corridors, one leading to the piombi, or cells under the lead roof of the palace, and the other to the pozzi, or cells on the ground floor. Casanova escaped from his piombi in 1755 and legend has it, that, on completing his daring escape he paused for a celebratory coffee in the Piazza San Marco before making haste for the frontier.

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