Church sights in Venice
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Basilica di San Marco
Creating Venice's signature architectural wonder took nearly 800 years of painstaking labour and one saintly barrel of lard. Legend has it that in AD 828, wily Venetian merchants smuggled St Mark's corpse out of Egypt in a barrel of pork fat to avoid inspection by Muslim customs authorities. Church authorities in Rome took a dim view of Venice's tendency to glorify itself and God in the same breath, but Venice defiantly created the basilica in its own cosmopolitan image, with Byzantine onion-bulb domes, a Greek cross layout, a Gothic rosette window and Egyptian marble walls. The roped-off circuit of the church is free and takes about 15 minutes. For entry, dress modestly…
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La Pietà
Originally called Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione but fondly nicknamed La Pietà, this light-filled and harmonious church designed by Giorgio Massari is best known for its association with the composer Vivaldi, who was concertmaster here in the early 18th century. Though the current church was built after Vivaldi’s death, its acoustic-friendly oval shape honours his memory, and it is still regularly used as a concert hall. Be sure to look up: on the ceiling, Giambattista Tiepolo’s gravity-defying Coronation of the Virgin seems to open up the church to the vast heavens themselves.
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Cattedrale di San Pietro di Castello
Unlikely though it may seem, this sleepy church on the far-flung island of San Pietro served as Venice’s cathedral from 1451 to 1807. Despite its glamour and central location, the Basilica di San Marco was ‘merely’ the doge’s chapel. The island of San Pietro (originally known as Olivolo) was among the first to be inhabited in Venice, and the original church here was the seat of a bishopric as early as 775. The present church is an almost-but-not-quite Palladio design. Palladio had been awarded the contract in the 1550s, but the death of the patriarch (Venice’s version of a bishop) led to a project hiatus that lasted beyond the genius’s own demise. Palladio’s successors…
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Chiesa dei SS Giovanni e Paolo
Who does brick Gothic best? When the Dominicans undertook the 100-year effort to build Zanipolo in 1333 to rival the Franciscans’ Chiesa diSanta MariaGloriosa dei Frari, the church stirred passions and partisanship more common to Serie A football than architecture. Both have red-brick facades with high-contrast detailing in white stone. But since Zanipolo’s facade remains unfinished, the Frari won a decisive early decision over Zanipolo with its soaring grace – and with Titian’s Assunta altarpiece front and centre, the Frari seemed impossible to surpass. Over the centuries, Zanipolo may have at least tied the score with the sheer scale and variety of its…
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I Frari
This soaring Italian-brick Gothic church features marquetry choir stalls, Canova's pyramid mausoleum, Bellini's achingly sweet Madonna with Child triptych in the sacristy, and Longhena's creepy Doge Pesaro funereal monument hoisted by burly slaves bursting from ragged clothes like Invisible Hulks – yet visitors are inevitably drawn to the small altarpiece.
This is Titian's 1518 Assumption, in which a radiant Madonna in a Titian-red cloak reaches heavenward, steps onto a cloud and escapes this mortal coil. Both inside and outside the painting, onlookers gasp and point out at the sight; Titian outdid himself here, upstaging his own 1526 Pesaro Altarpiece near the entry.…
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Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna
Designed and built by Jacopo Sansovino with a facade by Palladio – his first church commission – this enchanting Franciscan church is one of Venice’s most underappreciated attractions. The Madonna positively glows in Bellini’s 1507 Madonna and Saints in the Capella Santa, just off the flower-carpeted cloister courtyard, while swimming angels and strutting birds steal the scene in the delightful Virgin Enthroned, by Antonio da Negroponte c 1460–70.
Palladio and the Madonna are tough acts to follow, but father-son sculptors Pietro and Tullio Lombardo make their own mark with their 15th-century marble reliefs that recount the lives of Christ and an assortment of…
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Chiesa di San Zaccaria
When 15th-century Venetian girls preferred sailors to saints, they often had to do a penitential stint at the convent adjoining this remarkable church. A hotchpotch of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and baroque, it represents centuries of the wealth of disgruntled parents. Don't miss Bellini's melancholy Virgin or Tiepolo's version of the flight into Egypt via Venetian-style boat. For €1, you can also visit hidden chapels and the waterlogged, 10th-century foundations.
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Chiesa dei Gesuati
No matter the weather outside, the outlook is decidedly sunny inside this high baroque church designed by Giorgio Massari. Luminous afternoon skies surrounding St Dominic in Tiepolo’s 1737–39 ceiling frescoes are so convincing, you’ll wonder whether you’re wearing enough sunscreen. Striking a sombre note on the left side of the nave, Tintoretto’s 1565 Crucifixion shows Mary fainting with grief – but in 1730–33 Saints Peter and Thomas with Pope Pius V, Sebastiano Ricci’s chubby cherubs provide heavenly comic relief with celestial tumbling routines.
If you find the side door to the cloisters open, you might peek into the little-visited Chiesa di Santa Maria…
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Chiesa di Santa Maria Formosa
Rebuilt in 1492 by Mauro Codussi on the site of a 7th-century church, this house of worship bears a curious name (Shapely St Mary) that has spawned two local legends. One claims the church got its nickname because its address was confused with that of a local courtesan in a 16th-century guidebook. Alternately, you can choose to believe that the name comes via San Magno, Bishop of Oderzo, who had a vision of a particularly beautiful and formosa Virgin Mary on this spot. To match its rival legends, the cross-shaped church also has, oddly enough, two separate facades, one facing the canal and one facing the adjacent campo (square). With its generous baroque curves and serene…
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Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni
Venice's cosmopolitan nature is evident in Castello, where Turkish merchants, Armenian clerics and Balkan and Slavic labourers were considered essential to Venetian commerce and society. This 15th-century religious confraternity headquarters is dedicated to favourite Slavic saints George, Tryphone and Jerome of Dalmatia, whose lives are captured with precision and glowing, early-Renaissance grace by 15th-century master Vittore Carpaccio.
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Chiesa di San Giovanni Decollato
Heady rumours swirl like canal mists around this long-abandoned church named for San Zan Degolà, or St John the Headless, known rather less dramatically in English as St John the Baptist. On the south wall facing the campo is a sculpted medallion of a freshly severed head that presumably represents St John after his head was lopped off by Salome. But according to Venetian urban legend, this is an effigy of Biagio (aka Biasio) Cargnio, who had a butcher shop near here in the 16th century where the sausages contained a secret ingredient: children. When his recipe was discovered, he was promptly beheaded and quartered by the authorities, and his house and shop were…
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Chiesa di San Moisè
Icing flourishes of carved-stone ornament across the 1660s facade make this church appear positively lickable, although 19th-century architecture critic John Ruskin found its wedding-cake appearance indigestible. From an engineering perspective, Ruskin had a point: several statues had to be removed in the 19th century to prevent the facade from collapsing under their combined weight.
The remaining statuary by Flemish sculptor Heinrich Meyring (aka Merengo in Italian) includes scant devotional works but a sycophantic number of tributes to church patrons. Among the scene-stealing works inside are Tintoretto’s The Washing of the Feet, in the sanctuary to the left of the…
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Chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore
Solar eclipses are only marginally more dazzling than Palladio's white Istrian marble facade. Begun in the 1560s, it owes more to ancient Roman temples than the bombastic baroque of Palladio's day. Inside, ceilings billow over a generous nave, with high windows distributing filtered sunshine and easy grace. Two of Tintoretto's masterworks flank the altar, and a lift whisks visitors up the 60m-high bell tower for stirring Ventian panoramas – a great alternative to long lines at San Marco's campanile.
Behind the church, a defunct naval academy has been converted into a shipshape gallery by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. After escaping the Dachau internment camp with his son…
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Chiesa di San Martino
Stick your hand into the lion’s mouth by the door, and say something nice about your neighbours: maybe that will help atone for all the dangerous rumours spread through the years via this bocca di leone (the mouth of the lion of San Marco). Venetians were encouraged to slip anonymous denunciations of their neighbours through these slots, reporting unholy acts ranging from cursing (forgivable) to Freemasonry (punishable by death). Denunciations were investigated by Venice’s dreaded security service, led the Council of Ten.
The theme of persecution continues indoors with Palma Il Giovane’s canvases of Jesus being flogged and then marched towards Calvary. The pair is hung…
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Chiesa di Santa Maria della Salute
A monumental sigh of relief, this dazzling church was built by survivors of Venice’s plague as thanks for their salvation. The structure makes good on an official 1630 appeal by the Venetian Senate directly to the Madonna herself, promising her a church in exchange for her intervention on behalf of Venice – never mind the labour involved. At least 100,000 pylons had to be driven deep into the barene (mud banks) to shore up the tip of Dorsoduro to support the weight of this baroque engineering marvel.
Baldassare Longhena’s unusual domed octagon is an inspired design architectural scholars have compared to Greco-Roman temples and Jewish cabbala diagrams, and it remains…
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Chiesa di San Sebastian
A hidden treasure of Venetian art in the heart of Dorsoduro, this otherwise humble neighbourhood church was embellished with floor-to-ceiling masterpieces by Paolo Veronese over three decades. Antonio Scarpignano’s 1508–48 relatively austere classical facade creates a sense of false modesty from the outside, because inside, the interior decor goes wild.
Veronese’s horses rear over the frames of the coffered ceiling; the organ doors are covered with vivid Veronese masterworks; and in Veronese’s Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian near the altar, the bound saint defiantly stares down his tormentors amid a Venetian crowd of socialites, turbaned traders and Veronese’s…
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Chiesa di San Salvador
A dream made real, San Salvador was conceived in the 7th century when Jesus appeared to a sleeping Bishop Magnus and pointed out the exact spot on a lagoon map where he should build a church. There was, however, a minor technical glitch: the city of Venice didn’t exist yet, and the area was mostly mud banks. But Bishop Magnus had faith that once the church was built the parishioners would follow – and today this church perched on a bustling campo (square) proves his point. Built on a plan of three Greek crosses laid end to end, San Salvador has been embellished many times over the centuries, with the present facade erected in 1663. Among the noteworthy works inside…
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Chiesa di San Bartolomeo
German traders didn’t have to stray far from the trading floor of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi to pray for an upswing in the market for their goods. Through several incarnations and shifting fortunes, this church attended to the spiritual needs of Venice’s active German trading community. Originally a three-aisled church built in 1170, San Bartolomeo’s style was cramped by the buildings that cropped up around it after the Rialto bridge was completed. The current look is the result of a 1723 reworking by Giovanni Scalfarotto, whose sombre approach to exterior decoration was befitting a church dedicated to a martyr who was skinned alive – note the grimacing figure above the…
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Chiesa di San Polo
Travellers speed past this modest 9th-century Byzantine brick church between I Frari and the Rialto, with no idea of the major dramas unfolding behind these modest portals. Under the medieval wooden carena di nave ceiling, Tintoretto’s Last Supper shows apostles alarmed and outraged by Jesus’ announcement that one of them will betray him. Giandominico Tiepolo’s disturbing Stations of the Cross sacristy cycle shows Jesus tormented by jeering onlookers, only to leap triumphantly from his tomb in a ceiling panel.
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Chiesa dell’Arcangelo Raffaele
Chiesa di San Basilio; The neighbours called, and they want their grime back: when a recent cleaning of Francesco Contino’s 17th-century facade removed centuries of accumulated dirt on carved stone angels above the portals, it caused a local uproar. Had Venice lost its respect for the patina of age? But no similar argument was raised about the restoration of the baptistery, where Francesco Fontebasso’s freshly restored baroque frescoes glow like dawn in shades of pink, gold and pale green. The cycle of paintings above the main altar has been attributed to the Guardi brothers, but no one is sure which one – the vedutista (landscape artist) Francesco or his…
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Museo delle Icone
Glowing colours and all-seeing eyes fill this treasure box of some 80 Greek icons made in 14th- to 17th-century Italy. Keep your own eye out for the expressive San Giovanni Climaco, which shows the saintly author of a Greek spiritual guide distracted from his work by visions of souls diving into hell. The museum goes by a confusing variety of names: it’s also known as the ‘Museo dei Dipinti Sacri Bizantini’ (Museum of Holy Byzantine Paintings), and technically it’s housed in the Istituto Ellenico (Hellenic Institute).
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I Gesuiti
Giddily over the top even by rococo standards, this gaudy, glitzy 18th-century Jesuit church is difficult to take in all at once, with a staggering spaceship of a pulpit and undulating marble walls. The church is lavishly decorated with white-and-gold stucco, white-and-green marble floors, and marble flourishes filling in any blank space. Gravity is provided by Titian’s uncharacteristically dark, gloomy Martyrdom of St Lawrence, on the left as you enter the church. Also playing against type here is Tintoretto’s Assumption of the Virgin, in the northern transept. This image is the antithesis of his dark images in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, showing the Virgin on…
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Chiesa di San Pantalon
The stark, unfinished brick façade dates from the 17th century, although a church was here as early as the 11th century. Inside, the greatest impact comes from the 40 canvases representing the Martirio e Gloria di San Pantaleone (Martyrdom and Glory of St Pantaleone), painted for the ceiling by Giovanni Antonio Fumiani. The artist died in a fall from scaffolding while at work and is buried in the church.
Stroll off right down a dogleg blind alley to Campiello Ca' Angara. On the wall (numbers 3717 and 3718) is a sculpted medallion of what could be a Byzantine ruler, dating perhaps to the 8th century. That is one of the remarkable things about Venice - what would anywhere…
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Chiesa dei Scalzi
An unexpected outburst of baroque extravagance next to the dour Ferrovia, this Longhena-designed church has a facade by Giuseppe Sardi rippling with columns and statues in niches. This is an unusual departure for Venice, where baroque ebullience was usually reserved for interiors of Renaissance-leaning buildings – and in fact it was a deliberate echo of a style often employed in Rome, intended to help make the Carmelites posted here from Rome feel more at home. Sadly, the vault frescoes by Tiepolo in two of the side chapels are damaged. Before the main altar on your left, you might spot the tomb of Venice’s last doge, Ludovico Manin, who presided over the dissolution of…
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Chiesa di San Stae
An aficionado of Venetian light, English painter William Turner loved painting the sun-washed Palladian exterior of this church, with its facade dotted by statues of angels and cardinal virtues. You can see what a painter obsessed with light effects might admire in this church: for all its gleaming white classical grandeur, it retains a languid seaside air, with early-morning lagoon mists that collect mystically around its base. The church was founded in 966 but finished in 1709, and though the interiors are surprisingly spare for a baroque edifice, there are a couple notable works: Giambattista Tiepolo’s The Martyrdom of St Bartholomew and Sebastiano Ricci’s The…
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