Basilica di San Pietro di Castello, Venice

San Pietro di Castello is a Roman Catholic minor basilica and the former cathedral church of Venice. The building you see now dates from the 16th century, while a church has occupied this site since at least the 7th century. Its broad façade follows a design prepared by Andrea Palladio for his first commission in Venice; the work was later carried out in a modified form after the patron’s death.

Four engaged columns rise beneath the main pediment, flanked by broken pediment shapes, giving the frontage a restrained classical presence. A large dome crowns the crossing, and the campanile is described as one of the most precarious in Venice. Inside, the plan forms a Latin cross, with a central nave, aisles, transept, and deep presbytery.

The church was Venice’s cathedral from 1451 to 1807, despite its distance from the city’s political heart. Look for the Throne of St Peter, a 13th-century seat made from a funeral stone. Its traditional association with the apostle is not its whole story: the stone carries Arabic ornament and Kufic inscriptions from an Islamic funerary monument.