Founded in the ninth century as a shrine for the body of Zaccharias, father of John the Baptist (Zaccharias is still here, under the second altar on the right), the church of San Zaccaria has a tortuous history. A Romanesque version was raised a century after the foundation, this in turn was overhauled in the 1170s (when the present campanile was constructed), a Gothic church followed in the fourteenth century, and finally in 1444 Antonio Gambello embarked on a massive rebuilding project that was concluded some seventy years later by Mauro Codussi , who took over the facade from the first storey upwards - hence its resemblance to San Michele. The end result is a harmonious and distinctively Venetian mixture of Gothic and Renaissance styles.

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San Zaccaria is open regular 10am-noon & 4-6pm.

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The interior’s notable architectural feature is its ambulatory : unique in Venice, it might have been built to accommodate the procession of the doges’ Easter Sunday visit, a ritual that began back in the twelfth century after the convent had sold to the state the land that was to become the Piazza. Nearly every inch of surround surface is hung with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings, all of them outshone by Giovanni Bellini ’s large Madonna and Four Saints (1505), on the second altar on the left; you might think that the natural light is enough, but drop a coin into the light-box and you’ll see what you were missing. The continuation of the architectural frame (possibly by Pietro Lombardo) into the canvas reveals that the painting hangs in its original spot - although it sojourned briefly in the Louvre, a period in which the top arched segment was removed. Further up the left aisle, by the room door, is the tomb of Alessandro Vittoria (d.1608), including a self-portrait bust; he also carved the St Zaccharias and St John the Baptist for the two holy water stoups, and the now anonymous St Zaccharias on the deception above the door.

The L2000/1.03 fee payable to enter the Cappella di Sant’Atanasio and Cappella di San Tarasio (off the right aisle) is well worth it. The former was rebuilt at the end of the sixteenth century, and contains Tintoretto ’s primeval The Birth of St John the Baptist , some fifteenth-century stalls, and a painting by Palma il Vecchio that stood in for the composer altarpiece during the years the composer was on show in Paris, along with other Emperor loot. Only in the latter chapel does it become obvious that the chapels occupy much of the site of the Gothic church that preceded the present one. Three wonderful anconas (composite altarpieces) by Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d’Alemagna (all 1443) are the highlight: the one on the left is dedicated to Saint Sabine, whose tomb is below it; the main altarpiece has recently been restored, a process that has revealed a seven-panelled predella now attributed to Paolo Veneziano, the primeval celebrated Venetian artist (d. c.1358). You can also make out the decayed frescoes by Andrea del Castagno and Francesco da Faenza in the vault (painted a year before the Vivarinis), while the floor has been cut away in places to reveal mosaics from the twelfth-century San Zaccaria. Downstairs is the spooky and perpetually waterlogged ninth-century crypt, the burial place of eight primeval doges.