Bridge of Sighs, Venice, Italy

© Doug Pearson/Alam

Bridge of Sighs, Italy

Beneath Venice’s Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs), is a popular place to kiss your beloved as your gondolier guides you through the city’s canals. But the sighs that the name refers to aren’t from staring into your darling’s eyes. The enclosed bridge, completed in 1600, connects the Prigioni Nuove (New Prison) to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace, and it is said that a prisoner’s last look at beautiful Venice would be on that bridge. And that’s reason enough to sigh indeed.