One of the loneliest and most evocative churches in Venice, at the northernmost tip of Cannaregio, on a campo (a square) where grass still grows and everything has a rustic, country air — and the old place-name of the Secchere recalls when these grounds were barene, low marshy banks covered by water at every flood tide and dry at the ebb. Tradition has it built in 1388 by the noblewoman Antonia Venier, to whom St Louis, bishop of Toulouse — Sant’Alvise in Venetian — appeared in a dream and showed her the place; but the monastery was perhaps even older, recorded as ’de novo fundatum’ already in the register of Bishop Ramperto Polo at the beginning of the 14th century.