The patron saint of Jesolo is Saint John the Baptist, celebrated in June with the Palio Remiero delle Contrade, a race between two-oared mascarete boats, accompanied by a fireworks display on the banks of the Sile river. In 1211 the town changed its name precisely to «San Giovanni», a toponym arising from the presence of a monastery dedicated to the Baptist and run by nuns, to whom Bishop Andrea had granted the use of the cathedral baptistery as a church.
After a long period of crisis, the settlement's slow recovery was owed to the Venetian patrician Soranzo family, owners of much land in the area, who funded at their own expense the construction of a new church, dedicated to the Baptist and raised to a parish in 1495: the village re-formed around it. The Republic of Venice intervened several times to divert the Piave and Sile rivers, with the most important works carried out in 1499. The current parish church of San Giovanni Battista, the town's main place of worship, was built in the first half of the 20th century.
