05/12/2014
The Bridge of Sighs - our (romantic) guide in : Dan Brown
(I wonder how many people recall the same touching memory as they see for the first time the Bridge of Sighs in Venice? I am one of them :) )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPI1IRjonRE
“Il Ponte dei Sospiri,” Sienna replied. “A famous Venetian bridge.” Langdon peered down the cramped waterway and saw the beautifully carved, enclosed tunnel that arched between the two buildings. The Bridge of Sighs , he thought, recalling one of his favorite boyhood movies, A Little Romance , which was based on the legend that if two young lovers kissed beneath this bridge at sunset while the bells of St. Mark’s were ringing, they would love each other forever. The deeply romantic notion had stayed with Langdon his entire life. Of course, it hadn't hurt that the film also starred an adorable fourteen-year old newcomer named Diane Lane, on whom Langdon had immediately developed a boyhood crush … a crush that, admittedly, he had never quite shaken.
Years later, Langdon had been horrified to learn that the Bridge of Sighs drew its name not from sighs of passion … but instead from sighs of misery. As it turned out, the enclosed walkway served as the connector between the Doge’s Palace and the doge’s prison, where the incarcerated languished and died, their groans of anguish echoing out of the grated windows along the narrow canal.” (Dan Brown: Inferno)
Trailer from "A little Romance" directed by George Roy Hill