San Giorgio Maggiore

The church of San Giorgio Maggiore, the most prominent landmark across the Bacino San Marco from the Piazza San Marco, has been home to a Benedictine monastery since 982. After receiving the head of St George (sold to Venice for 100 ducats in 1462 by the Greek island of Aegina), a major restoration project was undertaken in the 16th and 17th centuries, endowing it with its present buildings by Palladio and Longhena to create a major Late Renaissance and Baroque architectural showcase.

All fell into decline in the 19th century, when Napoleon suppressed the monastery and confiscated its property and artworks; in compensation, with a keen sense of the absurd, he made the itty-bitty island a free port (you can still see its twin Lilliputian lighthouses designed by a professor of architecture for the occasion).