Chiesa di Santa Fosca

Torcello lies at the northern end of the Venetian Lagoon, one of the first lagoon islands to be settled. Refugees fled here after Attila destroyed Altinum in 452. By 638 Torcello had become a bishop's seat and a significant trading centre before Venice rose. The Chiesa di Santa Fosca dates from the eleventh century. Beside it stand the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta and the remains of a baptistery. The three together form the oldest and largest religious complex in the lagoon. The church was built as a martyrium, honouring a martyr, within an early Christian scheme that included a bell tower.

From outside, the church is a simple, balanced octagon. Step in, and you find a Greek cross with four equal arms. Researchers still debate the original design: some see a martyrium planned as a square inside an octagon, others a Greek cross. Five of the eight sides carry a portico of raised Byzantine arches on columns with carved capitals. On the side facing the cathedral, a few marble slabs survive between the columns. The pentagonal main apse bears two rows of blind arcades, flanked by semicircular side apses. Inside, eight marble columns with Corinthian capitals set the square nave apart from the rest. Above the crossing, a large drum supports a wooden roof. Its solid construction suggests a dome was planned, but none was ever built.

Saint Fosca's relics reached the island in the tenth century, carried from Sabrata, once Phoenician and later Roman, near Tripoli. Her cult followed the medieval trade routes across the Mediterranean. At the main altar a fifteenth-century Madonna and Child stands over an illuminated sarcophagus holding her remains. In the apse, a fifteenth-century wooden statue portrays the saint. On the outside wall, a relief from the same century shows her followers venerating her.