So far, so serenissima. But what I want you to discover is behind Palladio’s gleaming facade: a secret garden, unseen for centuries by anyone who wasn’t a Capuchin friar. In 2024, following years of negotiations and renovations (not to mention a flood that salted the earth), the Redentore garden is now open to the public. Simple wooden pergolas — laid out in a cross, naturally — segment the garden, after the medieval fashion, into zones for flowers, herbs, fruit trees, and vegetables. An apiary, a lily pond, chapels of modest brick: These simple elements, in the midst of heaving Venice, frame a lagoon-side Eden.
Special enough to have this garden as a refuge; Redentore is in sight of the cruise ship terminal, after all. But I love it here because this garden is a civic and religious institution just as much as the church. You come here for an hour’s calm, but you leave feeling that an apricot tree has as much sanctity as an altarpiece.
Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore, Giudecca, 194.