St Mark’s Basilica
Venice’s state church was modelled on the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople: a Greek cross with five domes. Over the centuries it was covered with mosaics and plundered treasures, among them the bronze horses from Constantinople. The result is a blend of Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic.
In 828 two Venetian merchants smuggled the remains of St Mark the Evangelist from Alexandria to Venice. The Doge had a church built for the relic beside his palace, and Mark became the city’s patron saint. The first church was damaged in an uprising in 976, and the present building was begun in 1063 under Doge Domenico Contarini and consecrated in 1094. The model was the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, which no longer survives. The builders were probably influenced by, or brought from, Byzantium. The church is built of brick, and the rich cladding of marble, columns and mosaic was added over the following centuries. St Mark’s was not the city’s cathedral but the Doge’s chapel, and thus the Republic’s own church, where the state displayed its wealth and its connections with the East.
The plan is a Greek cross in which each arm and the crossing has its own dome. Around the west and north sides runs a narthex whose mosaics tell the Book of Genesis from the Creation onwards. Inside the church the vaults and domes are covered with gold mosaics of biblical scenes, made over several hundred years. Behind the high altar stands the Pala d’Oro, a gold altarpiece with enamels and precious stones, partly Byzantine. The floor is a mosaic of marble pieces in geometric patterns and animal figures, which undulates because the ground has subsided. In the 13th century the domes were given tall outer shells of wood and lead, creating the silhouette seen from the piazza. At an outside corner sit the four Tetrarchs in porphyry, another spoil from Constantinople.
After the Crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204 the church was filled with booty, among it the four bronze horses that were placed on the façade. Napoleon took the horses to Paris in 1797, but they returned in 1815; since the 1980s the originals have stood indoors and are replaced outside by copies. The façade’s Gothic crest of pinnacles and sculptures was added in the 15th century. When the Republic fell, St Mark’s became the cathedral of Venice in 1807. The greatest threat today is water: at high tide the narthex floods and the salt breaks down marble and mosaic, and the flood of 2019 was a wake-up call. St Mark’s influenced domed churches in Italy and France, and in the 19th century it became a model when architects across Europe turned to Byzantine forms.