Gesuiti

The Jesuits, banned from the Republic in 1606 for supporting the Pope during the Great Interdict, were permitted to return to the Republic only in 1657 – a permission subject to a review every three years.

Because the city had forbidden the construction of new churches, the Order purchased the church of the Crociferi (who had been earlier suppressed for moral backsliding) and demolished it, hiring Domenico Rossi to design a new one (1715–29). When the Jesuits were suppressed again in 1773 the church became a school and barracks, but the Jesuits returned in 1844 and to this day occupy the nearby monastery.

After the charms of nearby Santa Maria dei Miracoli, the Gesuiti has the sad air of a fat, overdone girl who can’t get a date, no matter how much money her parents lavish on her appearance; the parents in this case were the Manin family (who also produced Venice’s equally unloved last doge); who paid both Rossi and Giambattista Fattoretto for a façade larded with saints and angels, pinned to the wall with bars, wearing iron haloes that bleed rust over the white marble. Over the door: the Manin coat of arms.