Santa Maria della Salute
(Basilica of St. Mary of Good Health)

Great Discoveries "Personal Tour Guides" will provide you with the most enjoyable and informative way to visit the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. Our carefully researched tour identifies and locates the most relevant treasures to ensure that you do not miss important works and that you clearly understand each items artistic and historic significance. As you view these carefully selected treasures, our professional narrators, accompanied by historically appropriate background music, will delight, amuse and inform you, making your visit a most memorable experience. Learn about La Salute with informative descriptions, photo's, building diagrams, sample audio tracks and more.

Santa Maria della Salute, the most brilliant architectural jewel in the Venetian crown, is a soaring baroque structure unlike any other. La Salute lifts its gleaming drum of white Istrian stone high above the city’s tiled rooftops; its silhouette dominates the southern terminus of the Grand Canal. The church sits at the entrance to Venice Italy like some great lady, on the threshold of her salon, with her domes and scrolls, her scalloped buttresses and statues forming a pompous crown, her wide steps placed on the ground like the train of a robe.

Throughout history, great plagues, wars, and disease have stimulated great art and architecture. La Salute is a case in point. In 1630, a plague had struck Venice taking some 45,000 people, over a quarter of its citizens, to early graves. In the midst of this horror, the Venetian Senate made a pact with God, “Stop the plague and we will build a church to honor the Virgin Mary.” The pact worked, the plague came to a sudden end, most likely due to cooler weather, and the Senate set about honoring their promise to God by building the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute or the Basilica of St. Mary of Good Health.

They announced a competition for the construction of a great church, which they would dedicate to the Virgin to give thanks to God for their deliverance from the virulent plague. A committee of senators chose the site, a spot near the Dogana di Mare, or Customs House, where the Grand Canal merges with St. Mark’s Basin. They ordered all the buildings in the area demolished, and had the corps of engineers drive no fewer than; legend has it, 1,156,627 wooden piles down into the hard clay to provide a solid foundation.

The Senate established precise guidelines for the design and construction of their church. It was to be designed so that the entire interior could be understood visually as soon as one entered. The architect was further required to erect a building that would harmonize with the site and make a brilliant impression, or bellissima figura, and of course, it could not cost too much. There was to be an equal distribution of bright light throughout the expanse, and the high altar was to dominate the view from the main door.

Eleven architects presented designs to these specifications and the project was awarded to an unknown 26 year-old Baldassare Longhena. The great architect’s grand design caused much criticism and envy amongst his competitors. But Longhena was fully convinced of the worth of his plan and he described his design as, "strange, worthy, and beautiful...in the shape of a round 'machine' such as had never been seen, or invented either in its whole or in part from any other church in the city." His invention, though never seen before, is beautiful in its concept. He created his church on a centralized plan that he covered with an enormous cupola, perfect and strong in its line and mass.

Longhena brought the baroque style of architecture to Venice, adapting it brilliantly to Venetian needs. The impact of his style was so profound that virtually all the city’s painters and architects turned to the baroque, thus giving Venice a third distinct style, a kind of overlay on top of the Gothic and Renaissance. His greatest creation is this huge, octagonal Church of Santa Maria della Salute, popularly known as La Salute and unquestionably the supreme masterpiece of Venetian baroque architecture.

Standing inside the main door one sees the interior of the church as the Senate and Longhena intended. Your eyes are drawn through a series of receding arches towards the main altar beyond. Thus fulfilling the Senates’ fairly precise and difficult stipulations that, “the high altar must be seen from the entrance while the other altars should not be visible until the viewer reached the center of the nave.”

A supreme feeling of peace and serenity permeates Baldassare Longhena’s well-lit interior. Eight majestic pillars support its octagonal shaped cupola in the typical Baroque spirit which aims to impress and amaze. Its majesty recalls the large spaces of the Roman basilicas of the late Classical period. Its six side chapels and main altar, themselves majestic works of art, are packed full of spectacular statues and paintings.

La Salute contains masterpieces and great works aplenty including two of Titian's greatest paintings, "the Pentecost” and “St. Mark Enthroned with Other Saints.” The large Sacristy contains an additional wealth of unforgettable Titian paintings as well as the work of other artists. Outstanding among these is one of Tintoretto’s most famous paintings, the “Wedding at Cana.”

La Salute’s white stone dome is easily seen from any point of the city. You will get your best pictures of the church from the water of the Grand Canal or St. Mark’s Basin, from the Vaporetto (waterbus), or a gondola, or a water taxi. The church is well lit during the daytime and you are permitted to take pictures of the paintings inside. You can easily walk from the Galleria Accademia to the Salute or you can take the #1 Vaporetto, which stops at the stairs of the church.

Listen to short 2 minute samples of our content. You can also click on the picture for an enlarged view.
La Salute History	The Great Sacristy
NOTE: Please click on the STOP button for your first sample before playing the second sample, or you will not hear it.

Purchase the full length audio tour for this location in your choice of MP3 formats (download or MP3 on CD):