A little way on the left is the Calle del Ridotto where, divided now into a cinema theatre, auction rooms, a restaurant, and the Grand Canal Hotel, is the once famous Ridotto of which Casanova has much to tell.

Here were held masquerades; here were gambling tables; hither Venice resorted to forget that she had ever been great and to make sure that she should be great no longer.

The Austrians suppressed it.
The church of S.Moise, with its very florid facade of statuary, has little of interest in it.

Keeping with the stream and passing the Bauer-Gruenwald restaurant on the left, we come in a few minutes to a bridge--the Ponte delle Ostreghe (or Oysters)--over a rio at the end of which, looking to the right, we see the great Venetian theatre, the Fenice.
The Fenice is, I suppose, the most romantic theatre in the world, for the simple reason that the audience, at any rate those who occupy the boxes, all arrive in boats.

Before it is a basin for the convenience of navigation, but even with that the confusion on a gala night must be excessive, and a vast space of time must divide the first comers from the last, if the last are to be punctual.