Scuola Grande di San Rocco

If the Doge's Palace shows Venice's political power, the Scuola Grande di San Rocco shows its soul. The scuole grandi were wealthy lay confraternities, part charity, part social club, part religious brotherhood, and San Rocco, dedicated to the plague saint St Roch, was among the richest of them. In 1564 the brothers held a competition to decorate their new building, and Jacopo Tintoretto won it with a characteristic trick: instead of submitting a sketch, he had a finished painting installed in the ceiling before the judges met. He then spent more than twenty years covering the walls and ceilings of the building, and today the Scuola holds over sixty of his works in the very setting for which they were created, the largest such cycle by any Venetian master and one of the great artistic achievements of the Renaissance. The visit begins in the ground-floor hall, with the life of the Virgin, then climbs a monumental staircase to the vast Sala Capitolare, the chapter hall, where Old Testament scenes crowd the ceiling and the life of Christ fills the walls, all in Tintoretto's dramatic, stormy light. Next door, the smaller Sala dell'Albergo holds his enormous Crucifixion, a painting so crowded with life and so emotionally intense that visitors fall silent in front of it. Beyond the Tintorettos, look out for the carved wooden benches around the chapter hall, works attributed to Titian and Giorgione, the treasury, and the views across the campo to the apse of the Frari. The building also has the adjoining Church of San Rocco, with more Tintoretto, under the same opening hours. Few places anywhere let you see a great painter's life work so completely, in the light and the rooms he knew.

Practical details: the Scuola is in San Polo, a few minutes from the San Tomà vaporetto stop and about a five-minute walk from Piazzale Roma, so it works well at the start or end of a day if you are coming in by bus or tram. It is open daily, with the ticket office closing half an hour before the building, and closed only on Christmas Day and New Year's Day, though the confraternity still uses its rooms and occasionally announces extraordinary closures, so check the calendar on its official site. Entry is by a modest ticket that funds restoration and the brotherhood's charitable work, and you can pay by card. It is rarely crowded, even in high season, which is one of the great joys of the place.

How to look: the paintings in the chapter hall ceiling are high and dark, so the Scuola lends hand mirrors that let you view them comfortably while looking down; take one, walk slowly, and you will see far more. Allow at least an hour, and give the Sala dell'Albergo time at the end, when your eyes have adjusted to Tintoretto's way of painting light. An audio guide or a good guidebook helps decode the biblical scenes. Concerts of baroque music are held in the great hall on some evenings, an unforgettable setting if your dates align.

Pairing: the Basilica dei Frari, with Titian's Assumption, stands just across the campo, and doing both in one morning gives you the two great poles of Venetian painting, Titian's glowing serenity and Tintoretto's turbulent energy. Ca' Rezzonico is a short walk south toward the Grand Canal. For lunch, the lanes around Campo San Polo and Campo Santa Margherita have relaxed bacari for cicchetti.