Month: October 2016

The Scuola Grande di San Rocco is a lay confraternity founded in 1478. The popularity of the cult of St. Roch, whose remains had been in the possession of the brotherhood since 1485, contributed to the latter’s rapid expansion to the extent of it becoming the richest Scuola of the city.

The first church dedicated to St. George was built between the eighth and ninth centuries. In 982 the island was donated to a Benedictine monk, who founded the adjacent monastery. The present church, built by Andrea Palladio, who worked on the project since 1565, is one of the best-known works of the architect of Vicenza.

The Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo called in Venetian dialect) is one of the most imposing religious buildings of medieval Venice, with the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. It is considered the Pantheon of Venice because of the large number of Venetian Doges, and other important people who were buried there since the thirteenth century. In the homonymous field, in the Castello district.

Under the Doge Jacopo Tiepolo (1229-1249) and Ranieri Zen (1253-1268) the Franciscans worked hard to clean up the lake Badoer, a marshland in the San Stefano Confessor (San Stin), and there built the first church of Santa Maria Gloriosa and the adjoining monastery.