Gesuati (Santa Maria del Rosario)

Just down the Zattere from little Santa Maria della Visitazione stands the 'other' Gesuati, Santa Maria del Rosario, a Rococo masterpiece built for the Dominicans between 1726 and 1743 by Giorgio Massari. It would be the biggest conventual complex erected in 18th-century Venice.

Some 270 piles had to be sunk into the mud to support the weight of the white façade alone, which with its giant half Corinthian columns and classical tympanum echoes Palladio’s Redentore across the water; the interior, too is an 18th-century compliment to Palladio, in its illumination, grey and white contrasts and the plasticity of its walls, that embrace the congregation in an elipse.