Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore
Palladio-designed plague-votive basilica with a Pantheon-inspired facade rising above Giudecca island.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore on Giudecca traces the 1576 plague that killed hundreds a day in Venice, among them the painter Titian, and the vow the Senate made if it lifted: to build a church to Christ the Redeemer. It follows the aging architect Andrea Palladio, overruled by the Senate when he wanted a round building, and the facade he modeled on ruins in Rome, its fifteen steps deliberately echoing the ancient Temple of Jerusalem. Palladio died three years into construction, never seeing the church he designed finished. Look up at that stacked, temple-front facade before you climb the steps.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Basilica Santa Maria della Salute
Domed baroque basilica built as a votive offering after a devastating seventeenth-century plague.
San Giorgio Maggiore Church
Renaissance basilica of gleaming white marble on its own lagoon island, with a bell tower offering panoramic views.
Church of Saint Sebastian Veronese
Parish church whose walls, ceiling and choir were painted over decades by the same Renaissance master, who is buried inside it.
Giudecca
Former exile island turned mills and warehouses, crossed each July by a temporary bridge of boats.
Chiesa di San Giorgio dei Greci
Domed Renaissance church with a visibly leaning bell tower, seat of the local Greek Orthodox community since the sixteenth century.
Basilica S.Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
Vast Gothic brick basilica sheltering Titian's altarpiece and a sculptor's pyramid tomb for his own heart.