Churches & Scuole

The pictures are still where they were painted to be

This is the thing Venice has that almost nowhere else does. Titian's Assunta is over the altar it was painted for, in the light it was designed around. Tintoretto's sixty canvases at San Rocco are on the walls and ceilings he made them for. You are not looking at a gallery hang; you are looking at the original installation.

The Chorus Pass

Sixteen or so churches share one ticket, which costs roughly what three of them cost separately and is valid for a year. If you intend to go into more than two, buy it at the first one. It covers the Frari, the Redentore, Santa Maria dei Miracoli and most of the others worth entering.

⛔ It does not cover St Mark's (free anyway), the Salute, or San Rocco, which are administered separately.

The scuole are not churches

A scuola grande was a lay confraternity — part guild, part charity, part social club — and the six great ones spent enormous sums decorating their halls in competition with each other. San Rocco is the one to see. They are ticketed separately from everything else.

Behaving in a working church

Shoulders and knees covered. No photography where it is marked, and it usually is. Services take priority and visiting stops during them, which in practice means most churches shut for a long lunch and much of Sunday morning.

The ones nobody goes to

San Giorgio Maggiore across the water — for the Tintorettos and for the campanile view that includes San Marco's. Santa Maria dei Miracoli, a small marble box in Cannaregio. San Sebastiano, which Veronese decorated over thirty years and is buried in.