The pale, arcaded front of the Doge's Palace fills the left side, and the enclosed Bridge of Sighs crosses high over a narrow canal to the columned prison building on the right, with a lower open bridge arching across in front. Gondolas, boats and crowded figures gather on the water at the right beneath a thicket of masts, and the whole scene glows in golden light under a blue sky with drifting white clouds. Joseph Mallord William Turner exhibited the painting at the Royal Academy in London in 1840. Tate explains that he painted Venice on smaller canvases with a new kind of buyer in mind, the middle classes, many of whom holidayed there, inspired by the poet Lord Byron, who had lived in the city.

Turner showed it with lines adapted from Byron: "I stood upon a bridge, a palace and / A prison on each hand." Tate adds that Byron allegedly coined the bridge's name. Later in 1840 Turner made sketches in Venice, probably on the spot, and Tate notes that one of them closely recalls this composition. The painting was accepted by the nation in 1856 as part of the Turner Bequest and is shown at Tate Britain. It is in the Tate collection in London.