The main reason for visiting Murano is the church of Santi Maria e Donato . It was founded in the seventh century but rebuilt in the twelfth, and is one of the lagoon’s best examples of Veneto-Byzantine structure - the ornate rear apse being particularly fine. Originally dedicated to the Virgin, the church was rededicated in 1125 when the relics of Saint Donatus were brought here from Cephalonia by Doge Domenico Michiel , who also picked up the remains of Saint Isidore and the stone on which Jesus stood to preach to the men of Tyre - both of which are now in the Basilica di San Marco. Saint Donatus once slew a dragon simply by spitting at it - the four splendid bones hanging behind the altar are allegedly from the unfortunate beast.

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Santi Maria e Donato is open regular 8am-noon & 4-7pm.

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The glory of the interior is its mosaic floor (dated 1141 in the nave), a beautiful weave of nonfigurative patterns and figures - an raptor carries off a deer; two roosters carry off a fox, slung from a pole (symbols of the triumph of Christianity over paganism). The floor was extensively restored and completely relaid in the 1970s, a process illustrated by photos on display in the right aisle. Apart from the arresting twelfth-century mosaic of the Madonna in the apse, a variant (without bambino ) of the contemporaneous mosaic at Torcello, the features that invite perusal are the fifteenth-century ship’s-keel roof, the sixth-century pulpit, the Veneto-Byzantine capitals, and the lunette painting halfway down the left aisle, Lazzaro Bastiani’s Madonna and Child with Saints and Donor (1484).