San Giovanni in Brágora

Founded according to legend in the 8th century by St Magnus, San Giovanni Battista in Brágora is so old that no one can remember what its odd name might mean (‘in the agora or marketplace’, or maybe ' in the brago' or mud, or maybe in combinations of the two?). It was rebuilt in the Venetian Gothic style, a rather late I-hate-the-Renaissance model in 1475, with a simple, lobed brick façade by Michele Codussi.

San Giovanni’s simple interior retains its original 8th-century columns and ship’s keel roof and contains treasures for all tastes: for relic-mongers, the body of St John the Almsgiver, snatched from Alexandria in 1247, lies in a glass case in the second chapel on the right; plus a pretty 13th-century Byzantine relief over the sacristy door, flanked by Alvise Vivarini’s Resurrected Christ (1498) and Cima da Conegliano’s Constantine and St Helena.