Santa Maria della Salute

The church of Santa Maria della Salute is a case in point. In October of 1630, after nearly a third of Venice's 150,000 citizens had been killed by plague, the Venetian Senate made an offer to God: "Stop the plague, and we'll build a church to honor the Virgin Mary."

God came through, or maybe the onset of cooler weather reduced the population of plague-ridden fleas. Whatever the reason, the plague was stopped in its tracks. The Venetian authorities honored their promise by giving the Virgin a prime chunk of real estate near the tip of Dorsoduro, where the Grand Canal merged with St. Mark's Basin.

In the resulting competition for a church design, the winner was an unknown architect named Baldassare Longhena, who had proposed a massive octagonal basilica that combined elements of Venetian Byzantine architecture with domes inspired by St. Peter's in Rome. Longhena described his design as "strange, worthy, and beautiful...in the shape of a round 'machine' such as had never been seen, or invented either in its whole or in part from any other church in the city."