In the silence of its great campo (square) in Castello, San Francesco della Vigna is one of the greatest buildings of the Venetian Renaissance: the Observant Friars Minor erected it on the vineyards that Marco Ziani, son of doge Pietro, left them in 1253, in a place that tradition held to be marked by the apparition of the angel to St Mark — the ’Pax tibi Marce’ that became the motto of the Serenissima (the Republic of Venice).