ABSTRACT
In a cheap printed pamphlet of the 1580s, the comic character Zan Padella, a country hick from Bergamo at the periphery of the Venetian State, described what he saw when he arrived in the booming metropolis of Venice. Disembarking at Rialto, Padella, who had been driven towards the city by his hunger and poverty, was rendered speechless by the abundance of food in the marketplace and the wealth on display at the banker's tables around the square of San Giacomo. As in a residential neighbourhood, where people developed a reputation or fama in the eyes of their neighbours, the workers around Rialto observed each others' actions and listened to each others' words, forming impressions of each other. An interest in heterodox ideas did not automatically marginalize people; indeed, it brought them into contact with others of different walks of life.
