Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Useful when studying The Merchant of Venice -- rialto

from wordsmith.org

rialto (re-AL-to) noun
1. A theatre district.
2. An exchange or marketplace.
[After Rialto, an island of Venice which was the commercial center of the city. The Rialto bridge was the first bridge on the Grand Canal.]

Click here for a picture of the Rialto Bridge.

"It was this... that made it some forty or fifty years ago the rialto of the West Indian islands." Daily Chronicle; Sep 23, 1901.

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