Scuola Grande di San Marco

Founded next to Santi Giovanni e Paolo in 1260 and one of the six Scuole Grandi or guild halls in Venice, the original Scuola di San Marco (now the main entrance to the Ospedale Civile) burned in 1485 when a breeze blew a drapery onto a candle. and was replaced with one of those unique buildings of distilled Venetian fantasy, an asymmetrical, sumptuously decorated Renaissance confection.

Pietro Lombardo built this replacement, with help from his sons and Antonio Buora; in 1495 Mauro Codussi was summoned to design its upper level of six curved crowns, a rolling motif that echoes not only Tullio and Antonio Lombardo’s charming shallow relief arches with lions on the ground floor, but also the domes of the 'other' St Mark’s and the city’s arched bridges.