The Doges' tombs
Twenty-five Doges in monuments competing along the walls.
kallerna — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Liridon — CC BY-SA 4.0 · GodeNehler — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Kasa Fue — CC BY-SA 4.0
Santi Giovanni e Paolo — "San Zanipolo" in Venetian — is the Republic's pantheon: a huge Gothic brick church where twenty-five Doges lie buried, its walls a gallery of marble tombs on which Renaissance sculptors competed century after century. Scale strikes first: the longest nave in Venice, at a height that swallows visitors. Then the walls begin to read — tomb by tomb — like walking the state's history and its men, with a great Bellini altarpiece and rare stained glass from Murano. Outside on the square stands Verrocchio's bronze condottiere Colleoni — among the world's supreme equestrian statues — beside the marble front of the Scuola di San Marco, the city's loveliest architectural trick of perspective.
Twenty-five Doges in monuments competing along the walls.
Verrocchio's bronze rider — Renaissance equestrian sculpture's summit.
An early Giovanni Bellini, serene and luminous.
Castello 6363, 30122 Venice
Campo Santi Giovanni e PaoloAmong the widest squares in Venice and the most densely packed with monuments, h1 minute walk4.6
Libreria Acqua AltaThere is a full-size gondola in the middle of this shop, and it is not a prop: i2 minutes walk4.3
Ocean Space (Church of San Lorenzo)The church of San Lorenzo shut its doors to the public in 1865 and stayed silent4 minutes walk4.6
I Gesuiti (Santa Maria Assunta)You walk in convinced the walls are hung with heavy green-and-white damask, fold7 minutes walk4.8
Rialto BridgeThe Rialto is Venice's most famous bridge and the oldest crossing of the Grand C7 minutes walk4.8A mercenary captain left Venice his fortune on condition his statue stand "in Piazza San Marco" — so the state cunningly placed it before the Scuola di San Marco here. A five-century-old play on words that gave the city its greatest statue deliberately in the wrong square.
Gothic twins: the Frari is the church of art — Titian and his tomb; this the church of state — Doges and their monuments. Loving one predicts loving the other, half an hour's walk apart via Rialto.
Walk five minutes north to Fondamente Nove, facing the cemetery island of San Michele and, on clear days, the Alps — then coffee in quiet Campo Santa Marina.