The long bank running alongside the rio della Madonna dell’Orto (a Venetian canal) is the waterfront of the Gothic church of San Cristoforo — the one everyone calls Madonna dell’Orto after the miraculous statue, also known as the ’Odorosa’ — which the sculptor Giovanni de Santi, dissatisfied with the commission, had placed in his own vegetable garden next door: at night it gave off strange flashes of light, the Venetians flocked to it on pilgrimage and the miracles multiplied, until the bishop persuaded the sculptor to hand it over to the friars of San Cristoforo.