St Mark's Basilica

Medieval chronicles narrate the translatio, the removal of Saint Mark's body, excluding the head, from Alexandria by two Venetian merchants and its transfer to Venice in 828 or 829. Doge Giustiniano Participazio (827–829) stipulated in his will that his widow and his brother and successor Giovanni should raise a church for the relics; it was finished by 836. Excavation has shown that this first St Mark's was cruciform from the outset, with at least a central dome, likely of wood, modelled on the sixth-century Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. It was intended not as an ecclesiastical seat but as a state sanctuary.

In 976 it was badly damaged when a fire set by crowds driving Doge Pietro IV Candiano from the ducal castrum spread to it. The general assembly had to meet in San Pietro di Castello to elect his successor, Pietro I Orseolo; within two years the church was repaired at the sole expense of the Orseolo family, an indication that the actual damage was relatively limited.

Probably in 1063, under Doge Domenico I Contarini, St Mark's was rebuilt and enlarged so thoroughly that the result appeared entirely new. Both transepts were lengthened and the wooden domes rebuilt in brick, which required strengthening the walls and piers beneath. A narthex went up in front of the western façade and the high altar was moved from beneath the central dome to a raised chancel. By 1071 the work had gone far enough for Doge Domenico Selvo to be invested in the unfinished church.

Selvo collected fine marbles for the interior and personally financed the mosaic decoration, hiring a master mosaicist from Constantinople. Several consecration dates are recorded, most likely reflecting a series of consecrations of different sections; that of 8 October 1094, when the relics were laid in the new crypt, is taken as the dedication. The Pala d'Oro, the gilded silver and enamel altarpiece ordered from Constantinople in 1102, was installed on the high altar in 1105.

As built the Contarini church was brick, and over the following centuries it was sheathed inside and out in marble and precious stones and hung with columns, reliefs and sculpture, much of it spolia from ancient and Byzantine buildings. During the Latin Empire of 1204–1261, which followed the Fourth Crusade, the Venetians stripped the churches, palaces and public monuments of Constantinople of polychrome columns and stone.

The four gilded bronze horses were among the early spoils. Once part of a quadriga that adorned the Hippodrome, and the only equestrian team to survive from classical antiquity, they were set on the main façade in the mid-thirteenth century as symbols of Venice's military triumph over Byzantium. Since 1974 the originals have been kept inside the basilica, with copies on the balcony over the central portal.

The interior mosaics were apparently complete by the 1270s, the narthex by the 1290s. By 1419, when a fire damaged the main apse and the western dome, no competent mosaicist remained to repair it; the government sought help from the Signoria of Florence, which sent Paolo Uccello, and other Florentines including Andrea del Castagno worked here in the mid-fifteenth century. From the sixteenth century the effort to keep repairs in the medieval style was largely abandoned, and Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese competed to supply designs for modern ones.

An exclusive restoration contract went in 1867 to the Salviati glassmaking firm, whose much-criticised practice of removing and resetting mosaics usually cost considerable quality. Roughly three-quarters of the mosaics keep their earlier compositions and styles, but only about a third can be considered original.

Under the Republic, St Mark's was the private chapel of the Doge: its primicerius was nominated by him personally and answered to him alone, while procurators elected by the Great Council supervised its finances, upkeep and treasury. That ended with the fall of the Republic to the French in 1797. Only in 1807, during the second period of French domination, did St Mark's become the patriarchal cathedral, a status confirmed by Emperor Francis I of Austria in 1816 and by Pope Pius VII in 1821.

On 24 June 1968 a portion of Saint Mark's relics was returned to the Coptic Church of Alexandria as a gesture of goodwill and reunited with the head. The basilica is the cathedral of the Patriarchate of Venice and an Italian national monument, and since 1987 has been protected as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.