The archpriest's church of San Giovanni Battista, known as the duomo, is the parish church of Gambarare, in the municipality of Mira. It is first mentioned in 1192, in the will of Speronella Dalesmanini, as San Giovanni Battista «di Balladello», the name the area then had. In 1290, after a period of decline, it was bought by Prando, abbot of Sant'Ilario, and from then on it came under the bishop of Castello, later patriarch of Venice; once restored, it was consecrated on 20 June 1306. On 27 March 1508 Pope Julius II granted the heads of the village's families the right to choose the parish priest: they gave it up only in 1998, and in exchange the church received the title of duomo.
What to see
Outside, the church keeps its late-Romanesque features, with walls marked by pilaster strips and hanging arches; in the various rebuildings marbles, stones and columns from the ruins of the monastery of Sant'Ilario were used. The gabled façade has a raised porch with a dome on four pillars, and in the centre the outline of the old rose window can still be seen, walled up when the organ was installed. In the twentieth century the building was lengthened by about seven metres towards the east.
The interior has a single nave, with a ceiling frescoed by Melchiorre Melchiori in the second half of the seventeenth century. The high altar, of 1712, has porphyry columns given by the Mocenigo family and an altarpiece of 1598 by Andrea Michieli, known as Vicentino, with the three Theological Virtues. On the entrance wall is an eighteenth-century organ by Gaetano Callido: with the one in Mestre cathedral, it is the only Callido on the mainland of the patriarchate.
Visiting
Opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish of Gambarare.
Our editors' tip
Above the side entrance look for the plaque of 1707 with the vernacular transcription of Julius II's bull. And on 8 December the statue of the Immaculate, kept in the chapel of the Sacred Heart, is carried in procession for the «Madona dei cavai».
