The spectacularly ornate church built by local architect Domenico Rossi was given explicit instructions to dazzle. The result leaves no room for half measures: you love it or you hate it, and many people do the latter. The exterior is conventional enough; the interior is anything but. All that tassled, bunched, overpowering drapery is not the work of a rococo set designer gone berserk with luxurious brocades: it’s plain old green and white marble.
Bernini’s altar in St Peter’s in Rome was the model for the baldachin over the altar, by Fra Giuseppe Pozzo. The statues above the baldachin are by Giuseppe Torretti, as are the rococo archangels at the corners of the crossing. Titian’s ‘Martyrdom of St Lawrence’ (1558-59), over the first altar on the left side, came from an earlier church on this site, and was one of the first successful night scenes ever to be painted.