Chiesa di San Nicolò dei Mendicoli

Other churches in town may be grander and glitzier, but San Nicolò dei Mendicoli earns a special spot in local hearts for being the most essentially Venetian. From the outside, this low, spare brick Veneto-Gothic church dedicated to serving the poor hasn’t changed much since the 12th century, when its cloisters functioned as a women’s shelter and its portico sheltered mendicoli (beggars). The tiny, picturesque campo out front is a Venice in miniature, surrounded on three sides by canals and bearing a pylon bearing the winged lion of St Mark, one of the few in Venice to have escaped target practice by Napoleon’s troops. Dim interiors are illuminated by a golden arcade and a profusion of clerestory paintings, including a work that’s among the most memorable of Palma Il Giovane’s many works in Venice: a Resurrection showing onlookers taking cover in terror and amazement, as Jesus leaps from his tomb in a blaze of dazzling golden light. The right-hand chapel is a typically Venetian response to persistent orders from Rome to limit music in Venetian churches: Madonna in glory, thoroughly enjoying a concert of angels on flutes, lutes and violins, singled out by Roman authorities as dangerously secular. The parish’s seafaring livelihood is honoured in Leonardo Corona’s 16th-century ceiling panel San Niccolo Guiding some Sailors through a Storm, which shows the saint shedding a beacon of light, guiding sailors rowing furiously through a storm.