Description
St Mark's Basilica is the cathedral of Venice and its most famous monument: a Byzantine church with five domes that closes off St Mark's Square, leaning against the Doge's Palace. Outside it is a jumble of marble and columns; inside, a cave of gold.
According to tradition, the body of the Evangelist arrived from Alexandria in Egypt around 828: two Venetian merchants are said to have hidden it under a load of pork, which the Muslim guards refused to touch. Venice built a church for the relics next to the doge's palace.
The one you see today is the third. The model was the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople: a Greek-cross plan and five domes. The walls are thin so as not to weigh on the unstable ground of the lagoon.
On the facade, the four bronze horses above the central portal are part of the loot of the Fourth Crusade, like many of the columns and colored marbles. The originals are now sheltered in the basilica's museum. The copies stand on the terrace.
Among the mosaics in the lunettes, the one above the Sant'Alipio portal, on the left, is the only one left from the 1200s: it shows the saint's body entering the church, with the basilica as it looked then.
Inside, domes, vaults and tall walls are covered in gold-ground mosaics, remade and retouched over eight centuries. Some follow designs by Titian, Tintoretto and Paolo Uccello. The floor ripples with inlaid marble showing animals and geometric figures, partly from the 12th century.
On the high altar, beneath which the saint rests, stands the Pala d'Oro, an altar frontal of Byzantine enamels on gilded silver ordered from Constantinople in 1102. In front of the chancel, a Gothic rood screen from 1394 holds up a great Crucifix and the Twelve Apostles.
In the right aisle a 13th-century cycle tells the story of the saint's theft, and among the inscriptions you even find the Arabic word “kanzir”, pig.
St Mark's was the doge's church until the fall of the Republic. It became the cathedral only in 1807, by Napoleonic decree: before that it was San Pietro di Castello.
Under the high altar, since 1835, rest the saint's relics, which were earlier in the crypt. The ciborium above is held up by four columns carved with scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin. Even the layout serves the ceremony: the long axis is a little longer than the others, to let state processions file past.
At the corner of the Treasury, next to the Porta della Carta of the Doge's Palace, the group of the Tetrarchs is set into the wall: four Roman emperors in an embrace, carved in red porphyry, another piece of loot from Constantinople.
Don't miss
• The horses of St Mark's.
• The Pala d'Oro.
• The mosaics of the theft.
• The inlaid floor.
Did you know?
• The four horses are the only quadriga from classical antiquity to have survived.
• The tall outer domes are wooden shells covered in lead, built over the true, lower domes.
According to tradition, the body of the Evangelist arrived from Alexandria in Egypt around 828: two Venetian merchants are said to have hidden it under a load of pork, which the Muslim guards refused to touch. Venice built a church for the relics next to the doge's palace.
The one you see today is the third. The model was the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople: a Greek-cross plan and five domes. The walls are thin so as not to weigh on the unstable ground of the lagoon.
On the facade, the four bronze horses above the central portal are part of the loot of the Fourth Crusade, like many of the columns and colored marbles. The originals are now sheltered in the basilica's museum. The copies stand on the terrace.
Among the mosaics in the lunettes, the one above the Sant'Alipio portal, on the left, is the only one left from the 1200s: it shows the saint's body entering the church, with the basilica as it looked then.
Inside, domes, vaults and tall walls are covered in gold-ground mosaics, remade and retouched over eight centuries. Some follow designs by Titian, Tintoretto and Paolo Uccello. The floor ripples with inlaid marble showing animals and geometric figures, partly from the 12th century.
On the high altar, beneath which the saint rests, stands the Pala d'Oro, an altar frontal of Byzantine enamels on gilded silver ordered from Constantinople in 1102. In front of the chancel, a Gothic rood screen from 1394 holds up a great Crucifix and the Twelve Apostles.
In the right aisle a 13th-century cycle tells the story of the saint's theft, and among the inscriptions you even find the Arabic word “kanzir”, pig.
St Mark's was the doge's church until the fall of the Republic. It became the cathedral only in 1807, by Napoleonic decree: before that it was San Pietro di Castello.
Under the high altar, since 1835, rest the saint's relics, which were earlier in the crypt. The ciborium above is held up by four columns carved with scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin. Even the layout serves the ceremony: the long axis is a little longer than the others, to let state processions file past.
At the corner of the Treasury, next to the Porta della Carta of the Doge's Palace, the group of the Tetrarchs is set into the wall: four Roman emperors in an embrace, carved in red porphyry, another piece of loot from Constantinople.
Don't miss
• The horses of St Mark's.
• The Pala d'Oro.
• The mosaics of the theft.
• The inlaid floor.
Did you know?
• The four horses are the only quadriga from classical antiquity to have survived.
• The tall outer domes are wooden shells covered in lead, built over the true, lower domes.