Treviso Cathedral Site Features

The exterior is misleading. A broad neoclassical portico of 1836 fronts the building, so from Calmaggiore the cathedral reads as a nineteenth-century civic monument rather than a church with a thousand years behind it.

Inside, seven domes run down the nave and aisles -- an unusual arrangement in the Veneto and the thing that makes the interior memorable, throwing light down in a series of pools rather than through side windows.

The crypt is the oldest and best part. A low forest of small columns with carved capitals supports the sanctuary above, and the change in scale between it and the church overhead is abrupt in a way that repays going down.

The Malchiostro Chapel, off the right aisle, is a self-contained Renaissance room -- frescoes by Pordenone on the walls and vault, Titian's Annunciation on the altar.

Titian's Annunciation

Painted around 1520 for this chapel and still in it, which is rare for a work of its importance.

Pordenone's frescoes

The chapel's walls and vault, by a painter working alongside a rival he is said to have detested.

The crypt

A dense grid of small eleventh-century columns beneath the sanctuary, and the oldest fabric in the building.

The seven domes

An unusual roofing scheme that defines how the interior is lit.

The cathedral closes the top of Calmaggiore, the arcaded street running up from Piazza dei Signori, on the highest ground within the old walls. The baptistery of San Giovanni, older and much plainer, stands beside it.