Santa Maria Formosa

Listen for a moment. Footsteps cross the wide stones of the square. A child's ball hits a wall, a café chair scrapes, and somewhere a boat engine slows on the canal behind the church. This is Campo Santa Maria Formosa, one of the largest open squares in Venice. Look up, and a pale stone church sits at its edge. It is not quite at the centre and not quite at the side, as if the square grew around it slowly over many centuries.

Welcome to Santa Maria Formosa, in the sestiere of Castello. A sestiere is one of the six historic districts of Venice. This one stretches east from Saint Mark's toward the old naval shipyards. The square around you is irregular and asymmetric, with palaces, houses and cafés pressed along its edges. Unlike the crowded lanes nearby, this space lets you breathe. Venetians have met, traded and celebrated here for a very long time.

Start with the name, because it carries a story. Formosa is an old word for beautiful, or shapely. According to a popular legend, a church was founded here in the seventh century by Saint Magnus, a bishop from the mainland. The Virgin Mary appeared to him, the tale says, as a beautiful and graceful matron. She told him to build a church wherever he saw a small white cloud settle. Historians treat this as legend, but the name stayed.

The building you see today is much younger than that tale. At the end of the fifteenth century, the architect Mauro Codussi rebuilt the church. Codussi was one of the great builders of early Renaissance Venice. He also worked on the church of San Zaccaria and on major palaces in the city. Here, he kept the outline of the older church, but he gave it a new interior of clean lines, round arches and calm proportions.

Now walk slowly around the outside, and you will notice something unusual. This church has two main facades. One faces the square where you may be standing. The other faces the canal on the far side. Most churches choose one front door to the world. Santa Maria Formosa turns to both the land and the water. That is a very Venetian answer, because for centuries many people arrived by boat, not on foot.

The facade on the canal side was built in the sixteenth century. It was paid for by the Cappello family, a powerful Venetian clan. It honours Vincenzo Cappello, a naval commander from the family who served the Republic of Venice at sea. In a city that lived by its fleet, this was a proud statement. It placed a family's glory directly on the water, where passing boats could see it every day.

The facade toward the square came a little later, in the early seventeenth century. It too carries family memorials rather than saints alone. Take a moment to compare the two in your mind. Both are formal and classical, built of bright Istrian stone, a hard white limestone brought across the Adriatic Sea. Venetian builders loved this stone because salt water and damp air damage it less than many other materials.

Here is a detail most visitors walk straight past. Go to the base of the bell tower, beside the church. Above the doorway, you will find a carved stone face. It is a grotesque mask, with a twisted, leering expression. The tower itself dates from the late seventeenth century. The face is not beautiful at all, and that was surely part of its purpose. Some say such faces were meant to frighten away evil.

The English writer John Ruskin, who studied Venetian buildings closely in the nineteenth century, hated this face. He wrote about it with open disgust and saw it as a sign of decline in Venetian art. Many visitors today feel the opposite. They find it funny, strange and very human. Stand under it, look up, and decide for yourself. It is a small piece of stone, but it has started arguments for nearly two centuries.

The parish also holds a famous tradition. According to Venetian tradition, pirates once seized a group of brides during a wedding ceremony in the city. Men from this parish, members of the guild of chest makers, chased the pirates and brought the brides home. In thanks, the Doge, the elected ruler of Venice, made a yearly visit to this church. Historians debate the details, but the festival linked to the story became an important event in the Venetian calendar.

Now step inside, if the church is open. The light changes at once. Grey stone frames white plaster walls, and the space feels open in every direction. Codussi used a plan based on a cross, with domes and side chapels around the centre. Your eye moves from arch to arch without strain. Notice how quiet it becomes, even with the square only a few steps away. The thick walls hold back the voices outside.

Look for two important paintings. One is a triptych, a painting in three panels, by Bartolomeo Vivarini, from the fifteenth century. It shows the Madonna of Mercy, sheltering people under her wide cloak. The other is a polyptych, a painting in several panels, by Palma il Vecchio, from the sixteenth century. At its centre stands Saint Barbara, tall and strong, dressed in warm red and gold. She was the patron saint of gunners, and soldiers once prayed before her here.

When you leave, pause again in the square. Look at the surface under your feet, and at the bridges that lead away over the canals. Just beside the square, across a small canal, stands the Querini Stampalia Foundation, a palace that now holds a museum and library. Notice the washing hanging from windows, the café tables, the pigeons on the wellheads. Then turn back once more to the church, with its two faces and its strange carved mask, and carry that small surprise with you into the lanes of Castello.