Discover Santi Giovanni e Paolo

Built in Italian Gothic style with a plain brick exterior typical of Venetian mendicant-order churches, the basilica trades external ornament for scale -- its nave is among the largest enclosed spaces in the city. Wooden tie-beams cross the nave at the height of the arcade, a structural solution to the thrust of the tall Gothic arches that also gives the interior its distinctive ribbed silhouette.

The choir is enclosed by tall Gothic windows rather than a solid apse wall, filling the east end with light -- a departure from the heavier masonry favored elsewhere in Venice's Gothic churches of the same period. The west facade was never completed with the marble cladding originally planned, leaving exposed brick that is now considered characteristic of the building rather than an unfinished flaw.