Churches in Venice

So as I said, I walked and walked and walked and took lots of photos along the way. Taking pictures of Venice is challenging; she’s just too photogenic and it’s easy to get carried away. But I did have my primary focus (churches and campanili) along with my other obsessions: cats, street shrines and tabernacles, holiday decorations, Byzantine details, fossils and floors, Madonnas, mosaics, angels, and funky monsters.

Occasionally my interests converged and it was very cool.

I found this tabernacle shrine to the Madonna inside a sotoportego in Dorsoduro. It’s a nice one and I snapped a few photos. But then I walked closer to look inside and what I saw startled me, then made me laugh.

This is one of the largest and most elaborate shrines I found. It’s in Castello, not far from the church of Sant’ Isepo (San Guiseppe di Castello, dedicated to St. Joseph).

I can’t find any information about its history besides a brief mention in DK’s Eyewitness Venice Top Ten guidebook which says that it’s a memorial shrine dating back to the 1600’s.

Someone certainly is taking very good care of it. Fresh paint, lots of fresh flowers, amazingly clean lace curtains and altar cloths. I wonder who takes care of shrines like this – ladies from the local church, ladies in the neighborhood, anyone who feels inspired?

Another nice detail is the old framed photo hanging on the door that shows women from the past sitting in front of that very shrine sewing or making lace perhaps.

I first visited this shrine during my 2006 trip after seeing it mentioned in Michela Scibilia’s restaurant guide (the shrine is right beside Osteria da Dante in Castello, not far from the church of San Lorenzo).

More than a shrine, it’s really like an outdoor chapel - the whole inside of the sotoportego is decorated and there’s a marble altar to the Virgin on each side.

I was very intrigued by it and wanted to know more but couldn’t find information about it anywhere. But then on my 2007 trip, I bought a great new guidebook (Paulo Giordani’s Venice) which has the story, and it’s a good one. It’s another Venetian miracle-working Madonna to add to my ever-growing list.

During the 1630 plague (the same plague that inspired the building of the Santa Maria della Salute church), a woman named Giovanna told her neighbors that their faith in the Madonna would protect them all from the plague. She painted an image of the Madonna with Saints and put it in this sotoportego, and it worked! The residents of this part of Castello remained healthy, and the locals believed that the miraculous power of the Madonna kept the plague from passing through the shrine into their neighborhood.

Locals also believe that the shrine kept their neighborhood safe from WWI bombs and every year on Nov. 21 when the city as a whole honors Santa Maria della Salute at the church, this neighborhood also honors her at this shrine.

This lovely green free-standing shrine is dedicated to San Antonio (St. Anthony), and it’s another very well-cared for shrine with a nice painting inside of the saint holding the Christ child. It’s in Cannaregio on the way to Madonna dell’ Orto and has a sign saying it was built in 1668. The vast majority of the shrines in Venice are dedicated to Mary, with St. Anthony a distant second. It makes sense that he’s the next most popular image since he’s a local saint who’s buried in his own church over in Padua.

Thanks so much to Leslie for telling me about this book – Shrines: Images of Italian Worship by Frances Mayes and Steven Rothfeld. It’s a beautiful little coffee table book with photos of shrines from all over Italy. It arrived in the mail yesterday and I immediately retired to the couch with it (is there anything better than getting a new book?!). I recognized most all of the Venetian shrines pictured in the book except for another large San Antonio shrine that I’d love to find.

There’s another very cool green shrine in Venice that I haven’t seen except in photos – this one that’s out in the lagoon somewhere. Here’s another great photo of it. Just amazing.

And I also want to see this incredible Madonna and Child that Kathy (trek capri) found. Her photos of Burano are beautiful.

In honor of Day One of the Great SlowTravel Blogging Challenge and today's theme (red), I'm posting this photo of a shrine. I have no idea where this one is in Venice - this photo somehow got separated from the ones around it that would give me a clue about where I was that day.

Most Venetian red has some orange in it, closer to terracotta. I think of the bricks and the tile roofs and the many, many churches with red and white marble floors. There are the rich rusty reds of Carpaccio, but also the jeweltone burgundies of Bellini. And of course, there's this dress, maybe the most beautiful red of all.

This shrine is in Cannaregio, close to the church of Volto Santo and former convent of Santa Maria dei Servi. The church was closed but I was happy to find this beautiful shrine. It’s unusual to find a shrine on the verge of being engulfed by Mother Nature. I like the ivy’s autumn colors and how they match the bricks. And I love the weather-beaten image of the Madonna inside.

Another quirky sight from Venice - someone's collection of dusty toys in a window.

This was next to the green door!

Since there’s not a church in Venice dedicated to San Valentino, I'm going with a “heart” theme instead.

This heart is on the floor of Basilica di San Marco and marks the place where the heart of Doge Francesco Erizzo is buried. His body is in the church of San Martino but his heart is here, as he requested in his will. There’s no name, just the little doge hat on top. He was doge from 1631-1646, a traumatic time in Venetian history that included 16 months of plague that killed 46,000 people, reducing the population by a third. Not many doges are buried in San Marco so I guess he must have been much loved to have his wish honored.

I read about this heart in a book, but it was many visits to San Marco before I finally stumbled across it and for some reason, it really moved me when I saw it for the first time, maybe because that church has my heart too. Anyway, if you want to see it, it’s in the high altar area to the left of the saint’s crypt.

Another heart, this one on the floor of the church of San Felice. I assume someone’s heart is buried here too but I don’t know who.

This Cannaregio shrine is close to Tintoretto’s house and Campo dei Mori, the campo with the four turbaned statues embedded in the walls.

As you can see, the shrine has a very reflective glass. I took about seven photos before I finally got the image of the Pieta relief inside – it looks kinda spooky and cool.

True confession time here….I’m a bit addicted to Google. I think of something I want to know and start looking and next thing I know, hours of my life have passed by and I’ve got all kinds of new and interesting trivia in my head. I haven’t decided if I should be worried about this or not.

Here’s an example. I was looking through my shrine photos and noticed how many of the Madonna shrines are light blue/sky blue/baby blue (we call it Carolina blue here in NC but that’s another story). Either her clothes are that shade of blue or the shrine itself or both. So I went to Google to try to find out why, and here are a few interesting things I found along the way.

Bathtub Madonna shrines

Who knew? Evidently these are very popular in the Midwest. Paint the inside of an old bathtub sky blue, bury it halfway, put a Madonna inside, and voila, a shrine for your yard.

Pink and Blue

This NY Times article about the Princess Craze says that in the early 20th century, pink was considered to be a masculine color (because it was close to red) and baby blue was a feminine color (because of its association with the Virgin). But by the 1930’s, the gender associations had switched, and pink became feminine and blue masculine. How weird is that? How and why does a change like that happen?

Why does Mary always wear light blue?

This article says that she doesn’t.

I finally found an explanation that makes sense – centuries ago, blue pigment (made from lapis lazuli) was the most precious and costly pigment in painting, and using that color was a way to honor and show devotion to her. That gave me the "a-ha" moment I was looking for so I could stop googling this topic and move into the next one.

Another nice shrine with fresh paint, this one has a history that dates back over 800 years. This San Polo sotoportego is supposedly the place where Pope Alexander III slept when he arrived in Venice in 1177. He came to Venice in disguise, exiled from Rome and on the run from Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.

The Pope put a special blessing here for anyone who comes inside and prays before the shrine, according to the wooden plaque above the entrance.

There are several other legends about this pope-on-the-run. One is that he worked as a janitor for six months at the convent of La Carita before someone recognized him and helped restore him to power. He also spent the night on the portico of the church of San Salvador. Eventually, the Venetian Republic (a neutral party in the dispute) intervened and negotiated reconciliation between the two enemies, and the spot where they kissed and made up is marked with a stone on the floor of Basilica di San Marco (another floor detail to track down). More photos below.

I love the funky frame on this shrine in Castello.

I wonder if someone had decorations left over from a wedding or baby shower and decided to honor the saint with them?

Nice image of the saint inside the shrine too.

Something about this shrine makes me think about being underwater - I guess it's that shiny blue material lining the back of the shrine. Love the wall, love the yellow flowers!

A sweet little shrine in Dorsoduro. This one is in campo San Basegio, not far from the Zattere. I love the purple stone framing this shrine.

There used to be a church in this campo - San Basilio, a 9th century church dedicated to St. Basil. It's gone (demolished in 1824) but the shrine remains.

Some of these shrines have an electric light inside which gives them a cool glow from a distance but you have to get very close in order to see who is inside. I love the brick wall with peeling stucco behind this shrine and the Byzantine Madonna inside.

Interesting neighbors! You can find this shrine in Corte Nova in Castello, not far from Via Garibaldi.

This beautiful marble tabernacle, showing the Madonna with Child Giving the Keys to St. Peter, is in eastern Castello on Fondamenta Quintavalle, on the way to the church of San Pietro di Castello. It’s an early 15th century work that was recently restored by the California chapter of Save Venice.

It's so wonderful seeing art outdoors as you roam around Venice, and there's actually quite a lot of it all over the city. You could make a case for moving works like this into a museum for protection, but instead, the restoration included adding lead to the roof to protect it from rain. I'm a bit sad that they finally had to move the four horses of San Marco inside, but those things are 2000 years old – it was time for them to get out of the weather, I think.

This beautiful shrine commemorates a demolished church that used to be in this Castello campo. Founded in 1130, the church was originally dedicated to Saints Liberal and Alexis but was rededicated to Santa Marina when her body was placed on the high altar of the church in 1231 after the Venetians stole her from Constantinople. These "pious thefts" are strange and recurring events in Venice's history; for whatever reason, stealing the body of San Marco in 828 started a trend that continued for centuries.

Santa Marina (aka Marina the Monk) is a very interesting 5th century saint from Lebanon who entered a monastery when she was very young, disguised as a boy, and no one knew she was a woman until decades later when she died and the monks were preparing her body for burial. Legend has that it was quite a shock when they discovered the truth!

During her life, she was falsely accused of fathering a child and accepted her punishment without protest and ended up raising the child who grew up to be a monk too. Marina was buried in a grotto at the monastery in Lebanon where she is still honored today, but at some point her body was stolen and taken to Constantinople, where it was later stolen again by the Venetians. She is usually depicted in art with the child who she did not father, as she is inside this shrine.

Several doges were buried in this church which had a great collection of art and was the parish church of the master Giovanni Bellini.

The church was suppressed in 1818 and for a brief time, it was a wine shop and tavern. There are funny stories about waiters and customers shouting, “a jug in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament” and such. And then the church was demolished in 1820 and private houses built on the site; the doges were moved to San Zanipolo and the relics of Santa Marina were moved to Santa Maria Formosa.

More beautiful Venetian bricks and a sweet little shrine with a salmon-colored Madonna inside...

It's pretty tough to pick a favorite Madonna in a city like Venice that is home to tens of thousands of wonderful images of her, but I definitely put this one in my Top 20. She looks vaguely Byzantine and iconic, and I love the design and colors. Looks like this one is ceramic tile, perhaps.

One thing I learned during my December trip is that you can almost always find a shrine inside a sotoportego (the covered passageways that are all over Venice) or on a street named for the Madonna (and there are many of those!).

This is one in Castello in a sotoportego off Via Garibaldi, not far from the church of San Francesco di Paola. This one's very elegant with all that gold.

Thanks so much to Maria I who told me who this is in the shrine (Mary, Queen of Peace) and translated the line under "Ave Maria":

"Regina Pacis Ora Pro Nobis" (Queen of Peace, Pray for Us)

I love our blogging community. Thanks Maria I!

Some mosaic images inside Venetian street shrines. The second one is the French saint, Therese de Lisieux, also known as the Little Flower.

This week's PhotoHunt theme is "support." In this case, I'm not talking about the shrine (though that could work too) but rather that big staple-shaped metal thing above it. You see these all over the buildings of Venice - I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I think it's some kind of support to help hold those old buildings up. I imagine someone with a very large stapler walking around Venice!

Happy weekend!

This lovely 17th century Annunciation relief is over a door on a house next to Ponte Cavallo, the bridge in front of the church of San Zanipolo. It'd be nice to see this every time you came home.

A sweet little San Antonio shrine in a corte in Cannaregio. Love those mops to the side. This one has so many flowers!

This shrine to the Madonna is at the base of the Rialto Bridge, on the San Polo side. She's a bit worse for wear but there are always lots of flowers in front of her.

Thanks to SandraC for the idea for this post! I rented the film "Agata e la Tempesta" after reading Sandra's review of it. Wonderful movie! I really loved it and seeing it inspired me to rent "Pane e Tulipani" (Bread and Tulips) again since it had been several years since I'd watched that one. Both films are by director Silvio Soldini, and both star the beautiful Italian actress Licia Maglietta.

Well, I know Venice better than I did the first time I saw "Bread and Tulips," and I saw two shrines in the movie that I'd taken photos of when I was in Venice last year. When I mentioned this to Sandra, she suggested that I post the photos on my blog, so here they are!

This first shrine is in the scene where Rosalba meets the plumber/detective who her husband had hired to track her down in Venice. They agreed to meet in Campo do Pozzi (campo with two wells) which is a real campo in Castello where this shrine is. It's hard to tell in my photo but the Madonna inside this shrine is the one from Titian's painting of the Assunta.

And then when Rosalba runs away and the bumbling "detective" tries to follow her, they go by this shrine, also in Castello.

Thanks to Sandra for recommending "Agata." Both of these movies are a perfect way for Italy lovers to get a fix in between trips. Sandra is currently blogging about her recent trip to Umbria and Tuscany; she has some wonderful photos and stories about many off-the-beaten-path towns and churches that she visited, so check her blog out too if you need an Italy fix!

This week's PhotoHunt theme is "blue."

Raindrops/roses, whiskers/kittens...blue satin sashes, etc.
Here are a couple of my favorite BLUE things in Venice.

Nov. 4, 2008: Make History

Happy Halloween, Happy Weekend, and Happy Hunting!
Find more photo hunters here.

This week's PhotoHunt theme is "ruin(ed)."

I've got a couple this week, a shrine in Venice and a shed in North Carolina.

This little wayside shrine in Venice looks like it's melting into the wall. It's not completely ruined but it's on its way.

But even so, it's still serving its purpose as a devotional altar, as you can tell by the little San Antonio candle someone put in it.

A fairy tale corner of Venice, this little courtyard has a charming blue shrine with flowers and lace and a colorful Madonna inside, a nice vera da pozzo with plants on top, and fluttering laundry. Pretty perfect!

Another sweet little corte with a shrine in Venice. The sign on the door next to the shrine says "La Bottega di Pinocchio"...Pinocchio's Workshop? I see the long-nosed wooden guy hanging there, under the bell.

I'd love to know the story of this place; it was like walking into a children's book. Found this in Castello on the way to the church of San Pietro di Castello

I ended up spending so much time on the island of Torcello that by the time I got to Burano, there was only about an hour of daylight left. So I skipped all the shops and went on a speed walk looking for shrines to photograph before it got dark.

I recognized this one because I'd seen a photo of it in Trekcapri's Venice Rediscovered , a wonderful report from her 2007 trip to Venice. I was happy to find it because it's such an unique and photogenic shrine!

This one is tucked inside a little sotoportego. While I love shrines with these little "eternal flame" lights, they aren't easy to photograph especially when they are in a dark place. Sometimes I wish I had one of those "click on, click off" light thingys like Dumbledore had.

This one is on the side of Burano's one church, San Martino. This church has one of the many leaning towers in Venice although it looked like it had been straightened a bit since the last time I went to Burano. It's still tilting but not quite as much.

And this one is on the side of a restaurant, close to the main drag with all the shops.

While looking for shrines, I also found a large colony of cats! I'll post photos of them later.

A cool little shrine/chapel/oratory in a corte in San Marco. Built in 1815 and dedicated to Beata Vergina Assunta, it even has a bell on top.

I only learned about Orbs recently, maybe because I just got my first digital camera last year. A quick google search showed lots of Orb discussion and photos out there on the web, with people divided into two camps: those with the rational “reflection off a dust particle” explanation, and then the mystical camp (people who believe that an orb is an angel or other being from the spirit world).

Now, I don’t know what they are but it’s surely more romantic and exciting to think that they are angels. I do believe that there are unseen benevolent beings around us, and I like the idea that they might pop up in our photos from time to time. And they show up so rarely in my photos that I pay attention when they do.

So anyway, I came home from Venice last winter with two orb sightings in my photos, both of them shrines.

There are shrines all over Venice but the sestiere with the most is definitely Castello which also has a number of very large shrines, almost chapels. This one is so obviously loved and taken care of so well. It's unique too because of what's inside.

Another large and well-loved shrine in Castello, this one has three statues inside - Mary, Christ, and a nun-saint who is probably Santa Rita. This one has double doors - the wooden ones which were open and then the glass-fronted doors which were closed and locked. Love the white roses and lace curtains.

There's an old vintage black-and-white photo of this shrine inside the shrine, with the caption "Tanto Tempo Fa" ....."So Long Ago."

Next in my series of big shrines in Castello, this one has a chalet feel to it with its shingled roof and wooden doors. As I was peering inside the window of this shrine, a local resident strolled over to check me out. He/she posed for a photo and then ran over to a nearby house, jumped in the window, and went inside.

Back to big shrines...I wrote about this one last year, and I revisited it this past December and took more photos. It's one of my very favorites.

To visit the shrine, you walk through the very charming Campiello de Ca' Sarasina. Love those flower pots on the building. You can see the open green door of the shrine on the right.

A shrine and some laundry. Doesn't get much better than this. :)

There's lots of stuff inside this shrine but the central image is a framed Byzantine-looking Black Madonna adorned with votive jewelry. She does NOT want to be photographed (I've tried twice and failed!).

Some of the shrines in Venice are very elegant while others are more homespun. This Castello shrine is kind of a mix - there's an intriquing old relief of the Mother and Child inside but the tabernacle and its dusty silk flowers are more charming and folksy than elegant.

This one, filled with geraniums surrounding Michelangelo's Pieta, is in Cannaregio.

A wall in Castello with bright blue paint and a San Antonio of Padua shrine with three silver stars painted above the shrine. One thing I've noticed about San Antonio shrines is that the saint is almost always holding Baby Jesus and sometimes, the baby is reaching up to touch his face. I don't know why but it's sweet.

Blog friend and fellow Venice lover Maria I of My Place in the Sun recently posted a few more San Antonio shrines that she found in Venice last fall. She noticed that he often has lilies around him too.

Just a note: I've been having some comment weirdness the past couple of days. If you get a message saying that your comment is undeliverable and you need to resend it, ignore it. The comments are coming through okay!

This is Rio della Verona, the canal that runs behind the opera house La Fenice.

This large shrine is in sotoportego San Cristoforo, next to the rio. It looks so clean and new, I wonder if it was also reconstructed after the fire.

The image inside the shrine is a copy of Titian's fresco of St. Christopher that's in the Palazzo Ducale.

Sometimes the wall behind the shrine is just as interesting as the shrine itself. This wall is ravaged but beautiful.

Here's another example ~

This week's PhotoHunt theme is "Creamy."

A couple of photos I took in Venice last year. First up is a booth at the Christmas market in campo Santo Stefano. I took this photo because of the marzipan fruit but there are some cream horns behind them.

A cream-colored statue of the Madonna inside a little street shrine.

You can find more Photo Hunters and join the hunt here.

Thanks for visiting and Happy Summer Solstice!

Here's a case where a bridge was named for a street shrine. The bridge, called Ponte dei Carmini, was built in 1791 and named for the adjacent shrine with an image of the Madonna del Carmine inside. The shrine is lovely but needs some attention; one side is propped up with what looks like a bed slat. This is in Castello, close to the church of San Zaccaria.

A lovely shrine to the Madonna in a charming corte close to the church of Santa Maria Formosa. When I look at these photos, I remember how excited I was when I found this one. It's a beauty. There's a little electric light at the Madonna's feet that gives her a cool-looking glow.

A shrine and some laundry, doesn't get much better than this. And a tree!

This first one really made me smile. I call it the minimalist shrine. No flowers or decorations, just a stone cross with a money box on top. Many of the shrines of Venice have donation boxes with locks, and I've often wondered who goes around collecting money from them or even has a key that works (some of the locks look quite antique).

This particular box had a coin stuck in the slot. I tried to push it in but it was stuck tight. Perhaps the box was made for lira (or ducats!) and someone tried to put a Euro in?

This one is on the island of Murano so it's fitting that there's a glass vase on the table next to the Madonna and child.

A very ornate shrine inside sotoportego Corte Zorzi in Castello, with gold reliefs of grapes and ears of corn on the sides and an image of San Antonio inside. This tabernacle was made using materials recovered from restoration work on the pulpit of the nearby church of San Martino.

I only found a few shrines there but wow, this first one might be my all-time fave. I'd like to copy this one for my own garden. It doesn't look like it would be too hard to build.

What a great use for a tree stump.

I also like this empty niche on the side of the cathedral.