I liked going out in the relative cool of the early morning, getting a newspaper, having my first cappuccino at the Bar all'Orologio and watching one of the last authentic neighborhoods in Venice come to life. In the last several decades, rising real estate prices have driven residents out; the population dropped from 171,000 in 1951 to fewer than 62,000 in 2006, leaving the city a tourist ghetto.
But you wouldn't know it in this campo, where I watched men with briefcases hurrying to work. Old women pushing shopping carts quarreled at the vegetable stand. Finally, the tourists started coming out, studying maps until they got the idea of looking up at the church.
It is one of the most companionable in Venice, with two main facades, one facing the canal, the other overlooking the campo where tourists enter. As the interior restoration proceeds, visitors can watch workers on ladders scour stone moldings and chip away old paint.
