The church of Santa Margherita is a deconsecrated religious building
in Venice, located in the Dorsoduro district.
It is located on
the north side of the square of the same name, facing the narrow calle
de la Chiesa. It is currently closed for worship and houses the Santa
Margherita Auditorium, one of the headquarters of the Ca' Foscari
University.
The origins of Santa Margherita are lost in legend: according to
tradition, it was founded by a Geniano Busignaco under the dogate of
Pietro Tradonico and consecrated in 853 by the bishop of Castello Mauro.
It had the title of pieve from the earliest times.
Originally it
was affiliated to the church of San Silvestro: the parish priest had the
obligation to pay it some taxes, as well as to converge on Holy Saturday
for the blessing of the Paschal candle. It was also collegiate with a
chapter formed by two priests, a deacon and a subdeacon; with the
passing of time he was reduced to just the parish priest, sometimes
flanked by a sacristan.
The parish was suppressed during
Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy in 1810: the territory was assigned to the
newly established parish of the Carmini and the church was
deconsecrated.
Since then the building has had a troubled
history: initially it was used as a tobacco warehouse, later (1839) it
was used as a deposit for marble from the other suppressed churches.
From 1861 it housed the studio of the sculptor Luigi Borro and from 1882
it housed an evangelical temple. In 1910 the Chamber of Labor was
located there, while from 1921 to 1977 it housed a cinema, popularly
known as el vecio ("the old one"), which was also the main office of the
Giuseppe Magnarin Cinematograph Company.
Since 1994 it has housed
the "Santa Margherita" auditorium of the Ca' Foscari University.
The first musical event performed in the new Auditorium was "La serva
Padrona" by G.B. Pergolesi, directed by Marco Bellussi, with the
orchestra of the Ca' Foscari University conducted by Vincenzo Piani.
In ancient times the church had a basilica-type structure with three
naves. There is news of a chapel adorned with mosaics, probably dating
back to the Byzantine period.
The current layout is instead the
result of the seventeenth-century reconstruction based on a project by
Giovanni Battista Lambranzi: although it appeared bare on the outside,
the interior, reduced to a single nave, was enriched by splendid works
and rich altars.
After the suppression of the parish and the
subsequent changes of use, most of the decorations were dispersed
(something still remains in the church of Santo Stefano). On the vault
it is still possible to admire a fresco by the painter Antonio Zanchi,
which depicts the martyrdom of Santa Margherita di Antiochia.
Currently the church is a building on the right side of which, facing
the square, are leaning against the buildings and the bell tower; the
gabled façade, stripped of any decoration, overlooks the calle that
links Campo Santa Margherita to the nearby San Pantalon.
The
interior of the church, modified according to the intended use and
stripped of all sacred furnishings, is small and has a nave. Already in
1813 the original marble pavement had been removed. The most striking
changes took place in the first decades of the 1900s, when the
deconsecrated church was transformed into a cinema: the nave was
shortened to make room for the foyer and ticket office, three orders of
loggias and longboats were created and the presbytery was transformed
into a stage. Furthermore, Zanchi's fresco is covered with a cloth. In
1987 the Ca' Foscari University bought the old cinema, to transform it
into the university auditorium. The restoration work recovers the old
decorative elements, and Zanchi's fresco is also restored. The structure
is made safe and equipped with cutting-edge technological systems.
Structure adjacent to the facade, the bell tower is the only element of the church that overlooks the campo. It is very characteristic, as a hub: the upper part, in fact, was demolished in 1808 because it was unsafe. Almost half of it remains, with the entrance portal and two loopholes intact. In the painting by the painter Gabriel Bella The entrance of a Piovan to Santa Margherita, kept in the Querini Stampalia art gallery in Venice, the bell tower is represented as it must have been before its demolition.