A Thick Description of Venice through Campo San Lio

By Isaac Mei• Jun 7 2025 • 4 min read

Architectural Elements of Chiesa San Lio in Campo San Lio

Architectural Elements of a Second Building in Campo San Lio

During my first night in Venice, I was rushed along with my group to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant named Osteria Al Portego, which specialized in seafood cicchetti and wines. In the madness of getting enough food for 20 of us, some non-seafood lovers, as well as those who were not paying attention, were not fully satisfied with the meal. As a result, my friend Adam and I sprinted to a pizza restaurant we found on Google Maps named Farini to get some food for our fellow classmates. The restaurant was located on one of the corners of Campo San Lio, a campo that, while I didn't realize that night, would be my favorite due to the memories I would develop there.

That night, a local Asian kid was casually shooting hoops against the towering, pale facade of Chiesa San Lio, the church that brings the campo together. I asked to borrow the ball, pulled off a trick move with my pizza in my other hand (it almost fell off the plate), and handed it back. By the second night, we were back. My friends went to a restaurant in the same campo (I cannot find the name on Google anymore), got candy at Captain Candy, and genuinely started to bond and get closer. I found the same kid whose family, I found out, happened to own the restaurant and played 1 vs 1 basketball with him. Once just a place I rushed through, the campo began to take on meaning through repeated encounters. Because of all of these memories that I built, I started using the campo as a landmark. However, I didn't realize that this landmark could be used to understand my studies. Clifford Geertz, on Balinese cockfighting, states that "Bringing assorted experiences of everyday life to focus that the cockfight, set aside from that life as 'only a game' and reconnected to it as 'more than a game,' accomplishes, and so creates what, better than typical or universal, could be called a paradigmatic human event" (84). I will use Clifford Geertz's method of thick description to understand the function of the campo and Venetian culture as a whole and increase my appreciation of Venice not just as a tourist site but as a living text of history, community, and meaning.

Me and my Favorite Venetian Playing Basketball

The architecture of Campo San Lio reveals its layered identity. At the center is Chiesa San Lio, a small but commanding structure marked by engaged composite columns around a doorway topped with a triangular pediment and entablature, a classic Renaissance door. The pale masonry contrasts with the rusticated base, grounding the church and proving its roots in the city. A simple cornice with dentilled molding runs across the roofing, leading your eyes to the trefoil at the top.

Across the campo, buildings start shifting styles. The building hosting the beautiful restaurant my friends and I dined at showed clear Venetian Gothic traits: pointed arches, a quadrifora, and string course slices between floors that all contrasted heavily with the Chiesa. Elsewhere, pilasters and blind arches appear, hinting at a former grandeur now transformed by residency and tourism. It is clear that the campo has evolved heavily together into one campo. But it isn't the stone by itself that gives any meaning to Campo San Lio at all; it is how the space is lived in. In the evenings I was there, there were always children playing basketball, tag, or having conversations that I couldn't understand. Memories were in the making. The people entering and exiting the church, a kid leading his little sister to fill up their bottle at the public wellhead, or the restaurant boy playing basketball were all so normal, things Venetians have done for centuries (of course, probably other sports).

It is the monotonous repetition of daily acts that gives the campo its meaning. The context of the events is what gives life a place of social choreography where roles are performed, negotiated, and passed on. Every night, I observed the same rituals of kids playing, locals talking against the buildings, and kids playing against the walls of the church. But I also saw tourists on the other side, like myself, buying pizza at the chain store, getting overpriced candy, or rushing through. They moved quickly, eyes glued to their maps, rarely looking up, especially since the campo wasn't anything special to them. Stuck between these two rhythms, I realized how invisible the way of life and the culture were to tourists. Campo San Lio wasn't flashy - it didn't have access to gondola rides, views of the Basilica, or social media-worthy backgrounds. Geertz writes that "its function is interpretive: it is a Balinese reading of Balinese experience; a story they tell themselves about themselves" (81). Just like Geertz uses cockfighting to read the Balinese experience, the campo was now my view - my lens, instead, to make sense of Venetian culture and its meaning.

I came to see Campo San Lio as an expression of the Venetian value of openness. Even though I was a stranger, the restaurant kid handed me the ball to play against the rusticated base of the church. In fact, we used the transition from the brick to the pale wall as a target or a makeshift hoop - a playful but meaningful repurposing of the sacred building. That wall became more than just a means of a threshold to holiness. Also, the public wellhead in the center of the campo remained accessible to everyone, a remnant of communal infrastructure that still serves its purpose. The church's aedicule framed the doorway like an open invitation to those seeking religious refuge as well. Lastly, the restaurant extended itself onto the bumpy cobblestone paving, setting up tables beyond its door and encouraging people to inhabit the available space instead of retreating indoors. People were encouraged to linger, both tourists and locals - there became no distinction (other than what they ordered). This blend felt perfectly Venetian - in a city that was a maze, Campo San Lio offered a rare kind of transparency.

After running through multiple tight alleyways, Campo San Lio offered a breath of fresh air. Rather than privatize space, the campo tried to absorb people into it. The quadriforas above echoed this, inviting people into their beauty. Just as Geertz used Balinese cockfighting to explore social understandings of status, rivalry, and social performance, I came to use Campo San Lio to understand Venetian identity, with blended boundaries between past and present, sacred and secular, tourist and local. Campo San Lio isn't narrated aloud - it is lived in thoroughly through routine, generosity, and the beauty of Italians.