Santa Maria dei Miracoli is a small early-Renaissance church on the edge of Cannaregio, near the Rialto, and one of the loveliest buildings in Venice. Built in the 1480s by Pietro Lombardo and his sons to house a miracle-working image of the Virgin, it is sheathed entirely in panels of coloured marble — porphyry, serpentine, and veined grey and rose — that turn the whole exterior into a polished casket rising straight out of the canal.
Inside, the single barrel-vaulted nave continues the marble theme, with a raised choir reached by a balustraded staircase and a coffered ceiling of fifty painted saints. It is a favourite Venetian wedding church, and small enough to take in fully in twenty minutes — a perfect, jewel-like counterpoint to the city's vast brick basilicas.