Chiesa dei Gesuiti

The Chiesa dei Gesuiti, in Cannaregio, hides one of the most theatrical church interiors in Venice behind a fairly conventional Baroque facade -- green-and-white marble carved and inlaid to look exactly like draped damask fabric, an illusion so complete that many visitors reach out to touch it to be sure it isn't cloth.

This is an active parish church with a small entrance fee of about a euro, which goes toward maintaining an interior that is expensive to keep. It is one of the few places in Venice where the admission is trivially small relative to what it protects, and paying it rather than looking in from the door is the least a visitor can do.

The marble drapery invites touching, and enough people give in to it that the lower folds near the entrance have been visibly worn and darkened by hands. The illusion is convincing without a fingertip test.

Services take priority over visiting, and the church closes to visitors during Mass. Photography without flash is generally tolerated; flash is not, and it does nothing for a dark interior anyway.

The church charges a small entrance fee, around 1 euro, and typically opens mid-morning and again in the late afternoon rather than staying open all day -- check current hours before visiting, since they're more limited than at Venice's larger tourist churches. It's a walk from the Fondamente Nove vaporetto stop, in Cannaregio.

The opening hours are the practical problem. The church shuts for several hours in the middle of the day and does not keep the long continuous hours of the larger churches, so an unplanned drop-in is more likely to find a locked door than not.

Titian's Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is a night scene -- torchlight, deep shadow, and a sky lit only by fire -- and in the ambient gloom of the first chapel it is close to unreadable. The coin-operated lamp is not optional here; it is the difference between seeing the painting and seeing a dark rectangle.

The marble drapery changes character through the day as raking light picks out the carved folds. Late morning, when sun reaches down the nave, is when the illusion is at its strongest and the stone looks least like stone.

Crowds are not a factor at any hour. Most visitors are here for ten minutes on the way to a boat, and the church is often nearly empty even in August.