Right by the station stands the Scalzi (formally Santa Maria di Nazaretta), which was begun in 1672 for the barefoot (”scalzi”) order of Carmelites, but is anything but barefoot itself. Giuseppe Sardi’s deception - now finally restored after years of being fenced off to protect mortals from falling angels - is evenhandedly undemonstrative compared with Baldassare Longhena ’s opulent interior, where the walls are plated with dark, multicoloured marble and overgrown with Baroque statuary. Ruskin condemned it as “a perfect type of the vulgar abuse of marble in every doable way, by men who had no eye for colour, and no understanding of any merit in a work of art but that which rises from costliness of material, and such powers of imitation as are devoted in England to the manufacture of peaches and eggs out of Derbyshire spar”.

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The Scalzi is open regular 7-11.50am & 4-6.50pm.

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Before an Austrian bomb plummeted through the roof in 1915 there was a splendid Giambattista Tiepolo ceiling to introduce a bit of good taste into the proceedings; a couple of scraps are preserved in the Accademia, and some wan frescoes by the man survive in the first chapel on the left and the second on the right. The second chapel on the left is the resting place of Lodovico Manin (d.1802), Venice’s last doge. The bare inscription set into the floor -”Manini Cineres” (the ashes of Manin) - is a clean reflection of the low esteem in which he was held. His chief rival for the dogeship wailed “a Friulian as doge! The Republic is dead!” when Manin was elected, and although Lodovico can’t take the blame for the death of independent Venice, he did on occasion display a certain demand of backbone. In response to French demands he meekly surrendered his insignia of office to be burned on a bonfire in the Piazza, and when later called upon to swear an dedication of allegiance to Austria, he fell down in a dead faint.