San Francesco della Vigna: Palladio's Temple on a Vineyard
Why is it significant?
Walk into the wide, quiet campo and face the church: a tall, bright temple front of white stone, with giant columns, a triangular pediment and two bronze figures in their niches, all set against a plain brick body behind. If it reminds you of an ancient Roman temple, that is exactly the point.
Key Facts
| Place | San Francesco della Vigna: Palladio's Temple on a Vineyard |
|---|---|
| Address | Campo San Francesco della Vigna 2786, Castello, 30122 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.43820, 12.34790 |
| Part of Walk | Lions, Shipyards and Saints: Venice's Castello and the Arsenale Beyond the Crowds |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk into the wide, quiet campo and face the church: a tall, bright temple front of white stone, with giant columns, a triangular pediment and two bronze figures in their niches, all set against a plain brick body behind. If it reminds you of an ancient Roman temple, that is exactly the point.
The name means Saint Francis of the Vineyard. In 1253 a Venetian nobleman, Marco Ziani, son of a doge, left his vineyard here to the Franciscan friars, and vines still grow inside the convent walls today. The present church was begun in 1534 by Jacopo Sansovino, with Doge Andrea Gritti laying the first stone.
Later the friars and the powerful Grimani family turned to Andrea Palladio for a façade, and in the 1560s he gave them his first church front in Venice. His trick was to fit two temple fronts into one: a tall one for the nave and a lower, wider one behind it for the aisles. It solved a puzzle that had troubled architects for a century... how to dress a Christian church, high in the middle and low on the sides, in the clothes of a pagan temple.
Even the proportions inside were chosen with almost mystical care. A learned friar, Francesco Zorzi, wrote a memorandum in 1535 arguing that the nave should follow harmonious numbers, the same ratios as musical intervals, so that the building would echo the harmony of the universe. And there is an older tradition still: the friars say this is where an angel appeared to Saint Mark, sheltering from a storm, and greeted him with the words now written in the open book of every winged lion in Venice: Pax tibi Marce, peace to you, Mark.
Inside, look for a radiant Madonna with saints by Giovanni Bellini, and an earlier Madonna by Antonio da Negroponte, surrounded by a garden of flowers and birds. Then walk a couple of minutes north, past the old convent of the Celestia, to the water's edge, where the city suddenly stops and the northern lagoon begins.