The Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo, run together by the Venetian dialect into San Zanipolo, a huge Gothic brick edifice, is one of the largest churches of Venice and has the status of a minor basilica. It is the Dominican church of Venice, and as such was built for preaching to large congregations. It is dedicated to a pair of obscure and probably fictitious saints, not the
two apostles.

In 1246, Doge Giacomo Tiepolo donated some swampland to the Dominicans after dreaming of a flock of white doves flying over it. The first church was demolished in 1333, when the current church was begun. It was not completed until 1430.

The vast interior contains many funerary monuments and paintings, as well as the Madonna della Pace, a miraculous Byzantine statue situated in its own chapel in the south aisle, and a foot of St Catherine of Siena, the church's chief relic.

San Zanipolo is a parish church of the Vicariate of San Marco-Castello. Other churches of the parish are San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti, the Ospedaletto and the Beata Vergine Addolorata.


Notable Works of Art

·          Giovanni Bellini (SS Vincent Ferrer, Christopher and Sebastian in the south aisle)

·          Bartolomeo Bon (the great west doorway)

·          Cima da Conegliano or Giovanni Martine da Udini (Coronation of the Virgin in the south transept)

·          Piero di Niccolò Lamberti and Giovanni di Martino (tomb of Doge Tommaso Mocenigo in
the north aisle)

·          Pietro Lombardo (tombs of Doge Pietro Mocenigo on the west wall and Doges Pasquale Malipiero and Nicolò Marcello in the north aisle; tomb of Alvise Diedo in the south aisle)

·          Tullio Lombardo (tomb of Doge Andrea Vendramin on the north wall of the choir)

·          Lorenzo Lotto (St Antonine in the south transept)

·          Rocco Marconi (Christ between SS Peter and Andrew in the south transept)

·          Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (St Dominic in Glory on the ceiling of the Capella di San Domenico)

·          Veronese (The Assumption, The Annuncation and The Adoration of the Magi on the ceiling of the Capella del Rosario; The Adoration of the Shepherds in the Capella del Rosario)

·          Alessandro Vittoria (St Jerome in the north aisle)

·          Alvise Vivarini (Christ carrying the Cross in the sacristy)

·          Bartolomeo Vivarini (Three Saints in the north aisle)

The Capella del Rosario (Chapel of the Rosary), built in 1582 to commemorate the victory of
Lepanto, contained paintings by Tintoretto, Palma Giovane, Titian and Giovanni Bellini, among
others, but they were destroyed in a fire in 1867 attributed to anti-Catholic arsonists.

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