Scuola Grande di San Rocco

A confraternity hall, not a church, and the most complete decorative scheme by one artist anywhere in Europe. Tintoretto won the commission in 1564 by cheating — asked for a sketch, he installed a finished painting in the ceiling overnight and pointed out that gifts to the saint could not be refused — and then spent twenty-three years filling the building.

What it costs

Ticketed. Not on the Chorus Pass; it is administered by the confraternity, which still exists.

Worth knowing what you are buying: this is not a gallery of Tintorettos taken from elsewhere and hung here. They were painted for these walls and ceilings, in this light, and have never moved. There is almost nowhere else in Europe you can say that of sixty pictures at once.

When to go

Any time. It is never crowded, which given what is in it is the strangest fact about Venice.

Mornings have the better light: the Sala Superiore is lit by high windows on one side, and by late afternoon the ceiling opposite them has gone dark.

Getting there

Vaporetto to San Tomà. It is beside the Frari and the two take a morning together.

If you only have an hour

Go upstairs to the Sala Superiore first and take one of the mirrors from the rack by the door — the ceiling is the point and looking up at it for an hour is not possible. Hold the mirror flat and walk.

Then the Crucifixion in the Sala dell’Albergo, which Ruskin thought beyond criticism and which takes up an entire wall.

What people get wrong

Doing it before the Frari when you are tired. This is the one that rewards attention, and it is dim, and it is all above your head.

And missing the ground floor on the way out. The lower hall holds the late cycle — an Annunciation and a Flight into Egypt painted when Tintoretto was in his seventies, and quieter than anything upstairs.