St. Mark's Basilica Italy

Legendary

Visit this impressive Roman Catholic church that dates back to the 11th century.

Photo by Jorge Franganillo

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In the year 828, two Venetian merchants stole a body. They took the remains of Saint Mark the Evangelist from a church in Alexandria, Egypt, and smuggled them out past Muslim guards.

The legend says they hid the relics in a barrel and covered them with layers of pork, knowing the guards wouldn't want to touch it. Whether that part is true or not, the relics reached Venice.

Venice needed a church worthy of them. Two earlier churches came and went, and the building that stands today was begun in 1063 and consecrated on October 8, 1094.

It started out plain. The first version was severe brick, with decoration limited to a few columns and screens inside.

What turned it into a showpiece came from somewhere else. In 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, Venetian forces helped sack Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.

They stripped its churches, palaces, and monuments and shipped the pieces home. Marble columns, carved reliefs, statues, icons, crosses, and reliquaries were all installed in the basilica.

The most famous prize was four bronze horses from the city's chariot-racing arena. Their heads had to be sawed off for the voyage, and the collars you see on them today were added to hide the joins.

Inside, the domes and upper walls were slowly covered in mosaics made with gold-backed glass. There are about 8,000 square meters of them, added over eight centuries.

All that gold gave the church its nickname. By the 11th century, Venetians were already calling it the Chiesa d'Oro, the Church of Gold.

Behind the high altar sits the Pala d'Oro, a golden altar screen ordered from Constantinople. It's studded with roughly 1,300 pearls, 300 emeralds, 300 sapphires, 400 garnets, and hundreds of other gems.

Napoleon took the horses to Paris in 1797. They came back in 1815, and in the 1990s the originals were moved indoors to protect them from pollution, with replicas put on the balcony.

Look up as soon as you step inside and let your eyes adjust to the gold. Climb the stairs to the museum to see the four original horses up close, then step onto the balcony for a view over St. Mark's Square. Pay the small fee for the Treasury to see the Byzantine gold and silver brought back from Constantinople.