F Chicago or New York were to build a fish market they would not put it on Fifth Avenue or the Lake Shore Drive, you may be sure. It would be built on Fulton Market or South Water Street and made conspicuous only by its ugliness and evil smell. They do things differently in Venice. They are going to have a new fish market, a beautiful fish market. It is to be built of marble and red tiles and is to front on the Grand Canal in company with the Ducal Palace and St. Marks, and to stand near the marble bridge of the Rialto. At the foot of this beautiful bridge, over which Venetians and travelers have been passing for three hundred and fifty years, among a multitude of little shops, the fish, fruit and poultry markets stand. The old fish market was so clumsy as to offend the eyes of the artistic Venetians and to disfigure the great water boulevards.

Signor Cesare Laurenti, one of Italy's best modern artists, set himself the task of designing a fish market that should delight the eye and be in keeping with the palaces of the Rialto. He got his idea from a famous old master, the "Miracolo della Santo Croce." In this picture is a home with one of those ancient loggiette, or inclosed balconies, flush with the walls, that marked old

Venetian houses. He used this as the keynote to the Pescheria or fish market. An arcade runs around the ground floor, forming a covered promenade, fronted by the round Eastern Gothic (Byzantine) arches supported by Corinthian pillars. To work out the details of the beautiful structure Laurenti called in Domenico Rupolo, the artist-architect who has charge of the restoration of the Ducal Palace-that building which Ruskin says Italy never again approached, and the ages may never see surpassed.

The design of Laurenti and Rupolo was submitted to the city council in December, 1900. Immediately a public banquet was given to the two, the old fish shed was torn down and work was begun on the Pescheria. It is to extend back and enclose the Stallon, or old slaughter-house that was built in the fifteenth century, and that is still celebrated for its magnificent ceiling of dark oak beams and carved panels, and for its column of infamy raised to the memory of the Querini family that was convicted of attempting sedition against the Ducal Government. Think of it! History, romance, art, utility, all under one roof, to be had for nothing by the merest stroller, or contemplated daily by the poorest Venetian when he invests centesimi in his frugal dinner.