Chiesa di San Zaccaria

Most visitors walk right past San Zaccaria on their way between St. Mark's and the waterfront, which is a shame, because this church has two things that are worth the detour: one of Giovanni Bellini's greatest paintings, and a crypt that's permanently underwater.

The flooded crypt is Venice at its most surreal. Built in the 10th and 11th centuries, the underground chamber was designed as a burial vault for doges, but the gradual rise in sea level means it now sits in several inches of permanent standing water. Stone columns rise from the still surface, their reflections doubling their height in the dim light. Doges' tombs sit in the water like stepping stones. It's beautiful, melancholy, and slightly terrifying — a preview of what climate change might do to the rest of Venice.

Upstairs, Bellini's "San Zaccaria Altarpiece" (1505) is one of the supreme achievements of Venetian painting. The Virgin sits with saints in a golden apse that seems to glow with actual light. Bellini was in his seventies when he painted it, and every brushstroke radiates the quiet confidence of a master who knows exactly what he's doing. The painting was so admired that Napoleon almost took it — his agents had it on the list.

The church is dedicated to Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, whose body was given to Venice by the Byzantine Emperor Leo V. The adjacent convent was notorious in the Republic — the nuns, mostly daughters of noble families who couldn't afford dowries, were famous for their parties, their lovers, and their general refusal to behave. Several popes tried to reform the place. None succeeded.