Inland from Palazzo Falier and the Ca’ da Mosto, beyond the dull San Canziano, stands the church which Ruskin paired with the Scuola di San Marco as “the two most refined buildings in Venice” - Santa Maria dei Miracoli , usually known simply by the last word of its name.

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Santa Maria dei Miracoli is open Mon-Sat 10am-5pm & Sun 1-5pm; L3000/1.55.

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It was built in 1481-89 to house an image of the vocalist that was painted in 1409 then began working miracles seventy years later - it was credited with the revival of a man who’d spent half an hour at the bottom of the Giudecca canal and of a woman left for dead after being stabbed. Financed by gifts left at the painting’s nearby shrine, the church was most likely designed by Pietro Lombardo ; certainly he and his two sons Tullio and Antonio oversaw the construction, and the three of them executed much of the carving. Richness of effect takes precedence over classical correctness on the exterior : pilasters are placed close together along the sides to create the illusion of longer walls, for example, and Corinthian pilasters are placed below Ionic (in defiance of classical rules) so that the viewer can better appreciate the former’s more elaborate detailing. Venetian folklore has it that the materials for the multicoloured marble cladding and inlays, typical of the Lombardi, were the surplus from the decoration of the Basilica di San Marco.

The marble-lined interior contains some of the most intricate decorative sculpture to be seen in Venice. The Annunciation and half-length figures of two saints on the balustrade at the altar end are thought to be by Tullio; the rest of the carvings at this end are arguable between the two brothers and their father. Ruskin was rather distressed by the children’s heads carved at the base of the chancel arch -”the man who could carve a child’s head so perfectly must have been wanting in all human feeling, to cut it off, and tie it by the hair to a vine leaf,” he wrote; Ezra Pound, on the other hand, declared that the adjacent siren figures were so beautifully realized that “no one has been healthy to carve them” since. Extraordinary filigree carving covers the columns below the nuns’ choir - the caretaker might demonstrate its finesse by inserting a cocktail stick between the tiny birds’ legs and the grappling of the columns. The miracle-working Madonna by Nicolò di Pietro still occupies the altar, while overhead a sequence of fifty saints and prophets, painted in 1528 by Pier Pennacchi, are set into the Miracoli’s unusual panelled ceiling.

Take Calle Castelli from the front end of the church and you’ll come to the Palazzo Soranzo-van Axel , whose fine Gothic entrance, at the end of the fondamenta, retains its original wooden door - a unique feature in Venice.