When Lord Byron wrote that he (or Childe Harold) “stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,” he inspired a permanent pedestrian traffic jam on the parallel Bridge of Straw. That is the best place from which to view the Bridge of Sighs, and incidentally where Byron/Harold actually had to be standing to see the view described in the poem.
But the Bridge of Sighs has all but disappeared. Tourists who flock to see it have to strain to identify it as the small limestone arch set into an enormous frame of billboards, above, below and spilling over on to the neighbouring state buildings – Byron's “a palace and a prison on each hand”. Painted sky obscures the real sky above the bridge, and there is a caption below declaring “Il Cielo dei Sospiri”. It is all for the proclaimed glory of Sisley, the clothing company.
Nearby in the Piazzetta, the Marciana, Sansovino's state library, is decorated with giant Swatch watches. At the west end of the Piazza San Marco itself, the Napoleonic wing that houses the Correr Museum is covered by a cinema-screen-sized billboard that, in a triumph of relative restraint, merely bears the name of the non-profit association of restorers, Prorestauro. So far. The space has been suggested for electronic advertisements and controversy continues over whether the city will allow it.