- San Marco, Rome
San Marco is a
basilica inRome . Devoted toSt. Mark , it was built in336 byPope Mark and rebuilt in833 byPope Gregory IV ; the basilica, located in the small "Piazza di San Marco" (adjoiningPiazza Venezia ), shows aBaroque style dating back to the restorations of the 17th and 18th centuries.History
In 336, Pope Mark built a church devoted to one of the Evangelists, his name bearer St. Mark, in a place called "ad Pallacinas". The church is thus recorded as "Titulus Marci" in the 499 synod of
Pope Symmachus .After a restoration in
792 byPope Adrian I , the church was rebuilt by Pope Gregory IV in 833.Besides the addition of a Romanesque belltower in1154 , the major change in the architecture of the church was ordered by thePope Paul II in1465 -70, when the inside and the outside of the church were restyled according to theRenaissance taste. In that occasion the church was assigned to the Venetian people living in Rome, Paul II being a Venetian of birth.The last major rework of the basilica was started in
1654 -57 and completed by CardinalAngelo Maria Quirini in1735 -50. With these restorations, the church received its current Baroque decoration.Artworks
The façade (1466) was built with marbles taken from the
Colosseum and theTheatre of Marcellus , and is attributed toLeone Battista Alberti .The inside is clearly Baroque. However, the basilica shows noteworty elements of all her millenary history:
* the apsis mosaics, dating back to Pope Gregory, show the pope, with the squared halo of the living people, offering a model of the church toChrist , in presence ofMark the Evangelist , Pope Saint Mark and other saints;
* the wooden ceiling, with the emblem ofPope Paul II , is the only preserved 15th century wooden ceiling in Rome, together with the one ofSanta Maria Maggiore ;
* the tomb of Leonardo Pesaro (1796) byAntonio Canova .References
* "Roma", collection "L'Italia", Touring Editore, 2004, Milano.
ee also
*
Churches of Rome
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