Chiesa di San Zaccaria Historical Timeline

Origins

A convent and church dedicated to Zaccaria, father of John the Baptist, was founded on this site in the early 9th century by Doge Giustiniano Participazio, and quickly became one of the most richly endowed religious houses in Venice, with close ties to the Doge's own court.

Turning points

The streets around San Zaccaria witnessed real political violence more than once: Doge Pietro Tradonico was assassinated nearby on September 13, 864, one of three doges killed in this same stretch of the city over the centuries. Tradonico's death was followed by days of street fighting, and the roughly eight conspirators eventually captured were punished severely -- some executed, others exiled as far away as France and Constantinople.

Influential people

Disaster struck again in 1105, when a devastating fire tore through the entire monastic complex, killing around a hundred nuns. The convent that eventually replaced it, however, developed a very different reputation: by the Renaissance, the nuns of San Zaccaria -- many of them daughters of Venice's wealthiest families -- had become notorious for their laxness toward monastic enclosure, entertaining visitors and living in far more comfort than their vows technically allowed.

Cultural evolution

The present church was rebuilt between 1458 and 1515, begun by the architect Antonio Gambello in the Gothic style and completed after his death by Mauro Codussi, who capped the building with a Renaissance facade -- leaving the finished building a genuine hybrid of the two styles, unusually easy to read from the street.

Present-day significance

Napoleon's forces suppressed the convent in 1797, ending nearly a thousand years of religious life on the site, but the church itself remains active, home to Giovanni Bellini's San Zaccaria Altarpiece and the submerged crypt that still draws visitors down into the building's oldest surviving level.