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.
This guide to the Chiesa di San Giorgio dei Greci in Venice begins in 1453, as Constantinople falls and a noblewoman named Anna Notaras flees to Venice carrying three sacred icons with nowhere to go, since the city that traded constantly with the Greek world refused to let Orthodox Christians worship openly within its walls. It follows the eighty years, three architects and a special tax on Orthodox merchant ships that it took before construction could even begin, and the decades more before the church was finally finished in 1573 as the first Orthodox church built in western Europe. Notice the bell tower beside the church before you go in.
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