San Geminiano in Piazza San Marco, demolished by Napoleon
Here’s the Piazza San Marco, painted by Canaletto around 1735. In many respects, lookin in many ways very similar to the way it does today. However, on closer inspection, the western end of the Piazza, seen in the background, is very different. For a start, there’s a church which no longer exists. Have a look at the picture below taken in March 2023.
The missing church is San Geminiano. Started in 1505 to designs by Cristoforo da Legname it was completed by Jacopo Sansovino in 1557. Sansovino, whose other buildings around the Piazza include the Libreria (Biblioteca Marciana) and the Zecca (the Mint), designed the facade and added a dome.
What happened to San Geminiano?
After Napoleon conquered Venice, he decided that he needed a new royal palace, for which he appropriated various buildings around the Piazza. One of the things he wanted was a large room for public ceremonies, with a monumental staircase, which opened on to the Piazza. And so the Ala Napoleonica was created, and San Geminiano was demolished. Collateral damage, as it were. Below are a pair of before and after pictures.
San Geminiano had added variety and visual interest to the square, the renaissance church being a counterpoint to the Basilica of San Marco at the opposite end of the piazza. The Ala Napoleonica, while not unattractive in itself, makes the Piazza less visually lively than it used to be. Things are somewhat more uniform, but that’s not the point, because the whole ensemble is not a symmetrical composition: the buildings on either side of the Ala Napoleonica (the Procuratie Vecchie on the north side and the Procuratie Nuove on the south side) complement each other but are different in scale and detail, as can be seen from my photograph, and in the comparative historical elevations below:
“The Ala Napoleonica completed Piazza San Marco bringing it coherence and unity”, according to the Fondation Napoléon, but they would say that, wouldn’t they.
Others might consider this an egregious act of vandalism inflicted on one of the world’s finest urban spaces.
A few more views of the Piazza with San Genminiano:
On the pavement in front of the entrance to the Correr Museum, where the church once stood, is this commemorative slab .