Santo Stefano, Venice

Stand still for a moment in the Campo Santo Stefano. The paving stones under your feet are smooth and pale, worn down by centuries of walking. Pigeons scatter near the cafe tables, and you can hear footsteps echo from the narrow lanes all around. At one end of this long, open square stands a brick church. Its doorway is carved in white stone, and its walls rise plain and warm in the Venetian light.

This is the Church of Santo Stefano, dedicated to Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr. It belongs to the San Marco district, close to the Accademia Bridge. Many visitors walk past it on the way to somewhere else. That is a mistake, because this church holds some of the most unusual details in the whole city. Let us take them one at a time.

The story begins with a religious order called the Augustinian Hermits. These friars followed the rule of Saint Augustine, and they settled here in the Middle Ages. They built their first church on this spot in the thirteenth century. Over the following two centuries, the building was enlarged and rebuilt. What you see today is largely Gothic, the pointed-arch style that spread across Europe in the late Middle Ages.

Look first at the main doorway. It is framed by white stone carved into curling leaves, twisting columns, and a tall pointed arch. This kind of decoration is often called flamboyant Gothic, because the stone seems to move like a flame. The portal is usually linked to the workshop of Bartolomeo Bon, one of the leading stone carvers of fifteenth-century Venice. Notice how sharply the white stone stands out against the red brick behind it.

Now turn your eyes upward, toward the bell tower behind the church. You may notice that something is not quite right. The tower leans — quite clearly. Venice is built on wooden piles driven into mud and clay, and over time some heavy buildings have settled unevenly. This tower is one of the most obvious examples in the city. The best view of the tilt comes from the nearby Campo Sant'Angelo, a short walk away.

Here is a detail that most visitors never discover. The church stands over water. A small canal, the Rio del Santissimo, runs directly beneath the back of the building. Venetian builders had little dry land to work with, so they sometimes built across canals instead of around them. If you walk around the outside, you can find the spot where the water passes under the church.

Step inside, and look straight up. The ceiling is made of wood, and its shape is very unusual. It curves like the hull of a ship, turned upside down. Venetians call this kind of ceiling a carena di nave, which means ship's keel. It makes perfect sense in a city of shipbuilders. The same craftsmen who built hulls for the great Venetian fleet knew exactly how to shape curved timber like this.

The ceiling also has a practical side. Wood is much lighter than stone. A heavy stone vault would push down hard on soft Venetian ground. A wooden roof puts far less weight on the foundations. So this beautiful ceiling is also a smart engineering choice. Take a moment to follow the lines of the beams from one end of the nave to the other.

Now look down at the floor in the centre of the nave. Here you will find a large tomb slab for Francesco Morosini. He was a Venetian military commander who later became doge, the elected ruler of the Venetian Republic. Morosini led Venice in wars against the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century. He is remembered both for his victories and for a darker moment. During his campaign in Greece, a shot from his forces struck the Parthenon in Athens, which was being used to store gunpowder.

The church holds major works of art as well. The sacristy, the room where priests prepare for services, contains paintings by Tintoretto. He was one of the great Venetian painters of the sixteenth century, famous for dramatic light and bold movement. His scenes here include the Last Supper and Christ praying in the garden. Access to the sacristy is often separate from the main church, so check at the entrance if you want to see them.

There is also a work by Antonio Canova, the great sculptor of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is a funerary monument for Giovanni Falier, a member of the Venetian family who supported Canova when he was young and unknown. It is a quiet, personal piece of gratitude in marble. Next to the church there is also a cloister, a covered walkway around a courtyard, which once held frescoes. Today only faint traces of them remain.

Locals like to tell one more story about this place. According to popular tradition, the church had to be reconsecrated several times over the centuries. Reconsecration was required when blood was spilled inside a holy building. The tale says violent deaths happened here more than once. It is hard to know how much of this is exact history, and how much is the kind of story Venetians love to tell about their churches.

When you step back outside, take a last look at the campo. In the middle stands a statue of the writer Niccolò Tommaseo. Venetians have a cheeky nickname for it, because of the pile of books placed behind him. Children run across the square, and people sit with coffee in the sun. Before you leave, look up once more at the leaning tower... and notice how calmly the whole city seems to rest on its mud and water.