Zani was one of St. Mark's bell-ringers of the 19th century, a big man over two metres tall who lived in the Castello district. Zani was the protagonist of a rather bizarre affair: he sold for an exorbitantly high sum to a scientist who collected human skeletons a skeleton of his own, which the aforementioned scholar could have obtained after Zani's death in order to put it on display among the others.
The two of them did things properly and even wrote a full contract. Zani was happy: he had never seen so much money and never would in a lifetime, doing that job that certainly did not make one rich. But you know, the euphoria of money leads to actions that often have nothing good in them.
One day, drinking in a tavern with friends, from joy and also from too much wine, the poor man had a stroke and died.
Today his skeleton is in the Museum of Natural History at the Fondaco dei Turchi, with a bell in his hand as a reminder of his work.
His ghost, however, does not rest: every night he climbs his bell tower and rings the twelve chimes of midnight, then returns to his wretched home, ringing the bell and begging for charity to buy back his bones.
