The major monument in the northeastern corner of Cannaregio is Santa Maria Assunta , commonly known simply as the Gesuiti . Built for the Jesuits in 1714-29, six decades after the foundation here of their first monastery in Venice, the church was clearly planned to make an impression on a city that was habitually mistrustful of the order’s close relationship with the papacy.

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The Gesuiti is open daily: summer 10am-noon & 5-7pm; winter 10am-noon & 4-6pm.

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Although the disproportionately huge deception clearly wasn’t the work of a weekend, most of the effort went into the stupefying interior , where green and white marble covers every surround and stone is carved to resemble swags of damask. The result is jaw-dropping, and also very heavy - a bourgeois in the subsidence which is a constant problem with the Gesuiti. Unless you’re a devotee of Palma il Giovane (in which case make for the sacristy, where the walls and ceiling are covered with paintings by him), the only painting to seek out is the Martyrdom of St Lawrence on the first altar on the left; painted by Titian in 1558, it’s a night scene prefabricated doubly difficult to see by the lighting arrangements.

Almost opposite the church is the Oratorio dei Crociferi , the remnant of a convent complex founded in the twelfth century by the crusading religious order known as the Crociferi or The Bearers of the Cross. After a fire in 1514 the buildings were enlarged, and towards the end of the century Palma il Giovane was commissioned to paint a cycle of Scenes from the History of the Order of the Crociferi (1583-91). Restored in the 1980s, the paintings show Palma’s technique at its subtlest, and the richness of the colours is a good advertisement for modern cleaning techniques.

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The Oratorio dei Crociferi is open April-Oct Thurs-Sat 10am-1pm; L3000/1.54.

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There’s not much else to look at in the immediate vicinity. Titian used to live in Calle Larga dei Botteri (no. 5179-83), crossways the Rio dei Gesuiti - but the house has been rebuilt and the construction of the Fondamente Nove did away with the waterside garden where he entertained such exalted clients as Henry III of France. A short distance to the west, past the huge sixteenth-century Palazzi Zen, the church of Santa Caterina comes into view. The fourteenth-century ship’s-keel ceiling, destroyed by fire in 1978, has now been rebuilt, but the building belongs to a school and is thus out of bounds.