The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

Campo Bandiera e Moro
of the saint were once brought; others link the name to the Greek word for a
main public square, agora, or to a choice of old Venetian dialect words – brago
and gora (meaning “mud” and “backwater”, or bragola, “market square”). The
origins of the church itself are equally disputed – folklore insists that this is
one of the city’s oldest, dating back to the early eighth century, but there’s no
documentary proof of its existence prior to 1090.
The present structure was begun in 1475, about the same time that San
Michele was finished and only six years before the Miracoli was started,
although the simple Gothic building shows no sign of the arrival of Renaissance
architecture in Venice. However, you can trace the development of a
Renaissance aesthetic in its best paintings, all of which were created within a
quarter-century of the rebuilding: a triptych by Bartolomeo Vivarini, on the
wall between the first and second chapels on the right (1478); a Resurrection by
Alvise Vivarini, to the left of the sacristy door (1498); and two paintings by
Cima da Conegliano – a SS Helen and Constantine, to the right of the sacristy
door (1501), and a Baptism on the high altar (1494). The remains of Saint
John the Almsgiver, stolen from Alexandria in 1247, lie in the second chapel
on the right, though the Venetian church dedicated to him – San Giovanni
Elemosinario – is over in the Rialto. Set into an alcove at the west end of the
left aisle is the font in which Vivaldi was baptized for the second time, having
been given an emergency baptism at home because it seemed unlikely that he
would survive more than a few hours.
San Martino and around
A group of Paduan refugees are said to have founded a church on the site of
the nearby San Martino (Mon–Sat 11am–noon & 5–6.30pm, Sun 10.30am–
12.30pm) in 593, which would give it one of Venice’s longest pedigrees;
Sansovino designed the present Greek-cross building in around 1540. To get
a decent perusal of Domenico Bruni’s distortedly perspectival ceiling painting
(seventeenth-century) you have to lie on your back in the very middle of
the church, more or less where most of Doge Francesco Erizzo (d.1646) is
buried; his heart is in the Basilica di San Marco.
eastern castello
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San Francesco della Vigna to the waterfront
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