Chiesa di San Zaccaria

Chiesa di San Zaccaria stands in Venice as a fifteenth-century church shaped by monastic, Gothic, and Renaissance traditions. The Benedictine convent once gathered noblewomen beside these walls. Antonio Gambello began the Gothic building, while Mauro Codussi completed its upper interior and façade in early Renaissance style. Tall Gothic windows circle the apse through an ambulatory, an unusual feature in Venice. Arched windows and columns create a meeting point between two architectural languages.

Inside, Giovanni Bellini’s San Zaccaria Altarpiece faces the entrance, with Tintoretto and Tiepolo nearby. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings cover the walls. The Golden Chapel preserves Renaissance frescoes, twelfth-century mosaics, and glass-covered remnants of a ninth-century mosaic floor. Beneath it, the crypt once held doges’ tombs and now often reflects Venice’s rising water. Saint Zechariah’s relics rest beneath the second altar on the right, while Alessandro Vittoria’s self-portrait marks his grave. Gaetano Callido’s organ, built in 1790, adds another surviving witness to the church’s layered history.