'Venice's ancient trading centre, the Rialto, stands on part of a site chosen for its comparative height and security by the first settlers in the lagoon. … As Venice expanded, the colonists transferred the functions of administration to San Marco and ecclesiastical matters came under the jurisdiction of the patriarch at San Pietro di Castello; but the district of the Rialto continued as the commercial heart of the developing city. The markets were established in 1097; and the first bank, the Banco Giro, opened here in the twelfth century. This, together with subsequent local business houses, handled financial transactions between East and West throughout the Middle Ages, completely dominating the international exchanges. Money lending at all levels proliferated;… the Colonna del Bando (looted from the East in the thirteenth century), [is] the rostrum from which in former times the laws of the Republic used to be proclaimed. …At the foot of the Rialto Bridge stands the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi which once housed the Lords of the Exchequer.

Christopher Hibbert, Venice, the biography of a city, published by Grafton