Chioggia Cathedral Historical Timeline

Origins

Chioggia has been a bishopric since the early Middle Ages, and a cathedral has stood on this site for far longer than the present building. The campanile of about 1350 is what remains of that earlier church.

Turning points

In 1623 a fire destroyed the medieval cathedral. The rebuilding was given to Baldassare Longhena, then at the start of the career that would produce Santa Maria della Salute and Ca' Rezzonico.

Influential people

Longhena's brief here was different from his Venetian commissions: a large, serviceable parish cathedral for a fishing town, not a monument to a plague deliverance. What he produced is correspondingly restrained.

Cultural evolution

The building accumulated altars, paintings and side chapels through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as Venetian-territory churches did, funded by the fishing confraternities and local families.

Present-day significance

It remains the cathedral of the diocese of Chioggia and the town's principal church, and its campanile is the landmark at the southern end of the Corso.