Starting from the second half of the 1500s, it was decided that a new building would be built for the prisons since the Doge’s Palace prisons had become too small: the ground-floor wells and the world-famous piombi, under the roof. The building, started in 1589 by Antonio da Ponte, was completed by Antonio Contin in 1614 and connected to Palazzo Ducale by the Ponte dei sospiri (Bridge of Sighs). The interior arrangement shows, at least in some sections, some attention to the conditions of in-mates with larger and brighter cells.