At the start of the Strada Nova, on one of the liveliest and busiest campi (squares) in Venice, stands one of the city’s oldest churches. Legend recounts that St Magnus, bishop of Oderzo, built it: in an ecstasy the twelve apostles appeared to him, ordering him to build it where he should find twelve cranes — and here the cranes were, for this was one of the first inhabited strips of the Rialto islands.