Along the Salizzada dei Greci (a salizada is one of the first paved streets), beneath the bell tower that leans over the rio (a Venetian canal), stands the oldest church of the Orthodox diaspora: built by the Greeks of Venice between 1539 and 1577 after a century of wrangling with the Senate, San Giorgio was the heart of the Greek ’nation’ — four thousand people including merchants, intellectuals and stradioti — which celebrated the Byzantine rite here under the Metropolitan of Philadelphia.