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.

Before my trip, I read a sweet little book called The Other Venice by Predrag Matvejevic, recently translated from Croatian to English. It’s a dreamy, poetic book by a guy who obviously loves Venice very much and loves obscure details as much as I do. Nice black-and-white photos by Sarah Quill too.

There’s a chapter about “wall flora,” the herbs and weeds that grow in the crevices of all those old buildings as well as info about the outdoor sculptures and reliefs all over the city. My favorite parts are the stories told to the author by an old blind Venetian man; this is one of them:

Near the Salizada del Pignater…as you pass through the Sotoportego dei Preti, you’ll come upon the “heart in brick” (cuore in mattone). Press it and make a wish; in a year at the most your wish will be answered, if it’s respectful and harms no one. The city’s old inhabitants have taught this to their grandchildren and they in turn to theirs. ‘Go and make sure it’s still there.’

Well, thanks to the maps on Venice Explorer and some good luck, I found the "heart in brick" in Castello not far from the church of San Giovanni in Bragora. And yes, I pressed it and made a wish. We’ll see what happens.

One of the things that makes Venice so magical for me are all of the “right place, right time” and “kindness of strangers” experiences I have when I’m there.

I spent the first three days of my trip roaming around Castello, a sestiere I’d spent little time in on previous trips. I'd read about this Angel of Benediction sculpture and managed to find it with only a normal amount of difficulty (in other words, I was very lost and then all of a sudden, I saw the angel!). It’s in a residential area north of the Arsenale on a calle that’s named for it.

So I was standing there looking at it, and an elderly Venetian gentleman came along. He began talking to me and when I told him that I was American, he switched to excellent English.

“I’m glad you found our angel,” he said, and proceeded to tell me the story. The Venetians stole the angel from Anatolia in Eastern Turkey, he said, and a family named Rizzo put in on the archway above the entrance to a sotoportego, along with the reliefs on either side. They don’t show up well in my photos, but the reliefs are porcupines (or maybe hedgehogs?), which was the insignia of this family. The man showed me the family’s palazzo which is one of the oldest in Venice (13th c.) and told me that the way to identify the oldest buildings is to look at the chimneys (the round ones are older than the more common tulip-shaped ones).

The man also told me that when Napoleon conquered the Venetian Republic and began taking art away, many Venetians began hiding their art, and the Rizzo family bricked up their porcupines. Then the family left or forgot, and the porcupines weren’t unearthed until about a hundred years later when some repair work was done on the sotoportego. He told me that there’s probably other street art in Venice that’s bricked over and hasn’t been re-discovered yet. I love the thought of that!

I spent a very pleasant 10 minutes or so with this very nice man who took the time to give me a little tour of his neighborhood. You can’t plan stuff like this, you can only be grateful when it happens.

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.

Believe it or not, this was not next to the green door though I bet that the toy collector and the green door decorator are friends (if not, they should be).

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!