Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Venice

Santa Maria dei Miracoli is the small marble church before you, a sanctuary created to house an image of the Madonna regarded as miraculous by local residents. Pietro Lombardo designed it with his sons Tullio and Antonio, and the building was completed from 1481 to 1489. It is an early Venetian Renaissance church, celebrated for its richly patterned marble skin.

Let your eyes follow the façade’s coloured stone panels, where squares, crosses, stars, and wheels form an intricate surface. The rounded pediment carries a rose window and smaller circular openings; above the portal, a sculpted Madonna and Child by Giovanni Giorgio Lascaris dates from 1480. Busts of prophets occupy the spaces between the exterior arches, while angels appear at the corners.

Inside, a single nave lies beneath a barrel vault divided into fifty painted coffers showing prophets and patriarchs. The raised presbytery begins beyond a striking marble stair set between two pulpits. The church’s story began with a votive painting commissioned in 1408 from Niccolò di Pietro.

In 1480, devotion to that image led to the decision to build this church. A major restoration from 1990 to 1997 treated the marble and sculpture, preserving the intense surface that makes this sanctuary so memorable.