The foundation stone went down in November 1910. The First World War flattened the old church and stopped the new one. When work restarted, the parish went back to the original drawings and finished them, and in 1927 the Patriarch of Venice came to bless it with the Duke of Aosta standing by.
At a glance
A wide brick church in a Romanesque-revival manner, with a gabled front articulated by pilaster strips and rows of small blind arches, a large wheel window at the centre, and a deep arched portal with a mosaic in its lunette. Beside it stands a tall, very slender campanile in the same pale brick, its bell stage opened by narrow vertical slots and capped with a plain pyramid. The town was called Cavazuccherina until 1930; the church is older than the name Jesolo.
Key facts
- What it is: the parish church of Jesolo
- Where: Jesolo, province of Venice, Veneto
- Designed by: the engineer Paoletti, whose scheme was chosen after an earlier project by the engineer Berchet (1904) was judged too expensive
- Foundation stone: 13 November 1910
- Completed: 1927; contract awarded to the Montagner firm in 1924
- Blessed: 9 October 1927 by Patriarch Pietro La Fontaine, in the presence of the Duke of Aosta
- Consecrated: 29 March 1932, with the marble altar, to St John the Baptist and St Magnus, bishop
History
The parish had been trying to replace its church since the beginning of the century. In 1904 the engineer Berchet was asked for a design; it was not carried out, because it cost too much. Paoletti’s scheme was chosen instead, and on 13 November 1910 the foundation stone was laid.
Then the front came. Cavazuccherina lay just behind the lower Piave, and in the fighting of 1917–18 the old church was razed to the ground and work on the new one stopped altogether. Afterwards the parish worshipped in a chiesa baracca, a wooden hut among the other wooden buildings that housed the returning population.
They went back to Paoletti’s original drawings. In 1924 the Montagner firm won the contract, and the building was finished in 1927. On 9 October that year Patriarch Pietro La Fontaine came to bless it, with the Duke of Aosta present at the ceremony. La Fontaine returned on 29 March 1932 to consecrate the church and its marble altar, dedicated to St John the Baptist and to St Magnus, bishop.
What you see
The front is built of a pale sandy brick with dressings in white stone, and its ornament is all in the brick itself: bands of tiny corbelled arches run along the rake of the gable and across the aisles, and the pilaster strips that divide the front are picked out with a saw-tooth course. The wheel window at the centre has a stone tracery of spokes and small columns.
The portal is the piece to stand in front of. A deep arch, ringed by a saw-tooth moulding, shelters a mosaic lunette in strong blues and greens: John the Baptist standing at the centre with his reed cross, figures kneeling to either side. Below it, a carved lintel of small panels, a bishop’s coat of arms on the doorhead, and bronze doors with relief panels. On the pier at the right a marble tablet records the anniversary of the inauguration of the church and of the Ponte della Vittoria, placed by the town council and the parish community in 2007, eighty years on. Flanking the portal, in the blind arches of the aisles, are two modern wrought-iron angels.
Practical information
- A working parish church: open for services, free.
- The mosaic in the portal lunette reads best in morning light.
- Our map point marks the church on its square.
Getting there
The church is in Jesolo town, inland from the Lido di Jesolo beach strip, about 40 km east of Venice by road and reachable by bus from Venice, Mestre and San Donà di Piave.
Nearby
- The ruins of the old episcopal basilica of Equilium, on the edge of the town.
- The Ponte della Vittoria over the Sile.
- Lido di Jesolo, 4 km south.
Look around it
Google Street View opens on the nearest panorama to this point: The church square in Street View.
More photographs
Sources
- Parish history of San Giovanni Battista, Jesolo: the 1904 Berchet project abandoned as too costly, the choice of Paoletti’s design, the foundation stone of 13 November 1910, the interruption of the war and the destruction of the old church, the provisional wooden church, the Montagner contract of 1924, completion in 1927, the blessing of 9 October 1927 by Patriarch Pietro La Fontaine with the Duke of Aosta present, and the consecration of 29 March 1932.
- Church census of the Italian dioceses (CEI), record for Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista, Jesolo.
- Photographs taken on site by Stefano Vigolo; the portal, the mosaic and the 2007 tablet are described from them.
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →Record researched and written by Stefano Vigolo for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of places: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photoRequest to use these images
Each photograph is offered by the person who took it — the seller is the photographer named on the image; Cultural Heritage Online runs the payment and delivers the file on their behalf. Buying gives you the right to use the image in your own project — a website, an article, a presentation — with the file and a written licence. Read the Terms of Sale.
What you receive. The file as it is held in our archive: the photographer's own original, without the Cultural Heritage Online watermark, unretouched and not enlarged. This is a working archive built over many years by many people, so the files differ — some were taken recently, others years ago with the equipment of their time. Older pictures are usually smaller: a camera from fifteen or twenty years ago simply recorded fewer pixels than a phone does today, so the resolution is lower and the print comes out smaller. We say so rather than hide it. The size, weight, format and year of each one are printed below it, and the print size is given at 300 dpi. Nothing is upscaled to make a number look better. Where the picture on this page has been cropped for the layout, the file you receive is the full frame, which may be wider or taller than what you see here.
jesolo-san-giovanni-battista-portale-mosaico
Sold by Photo: Stefano Vigolo
€3.00
2048 × 1536 px · JPG · 587.5 KB
prints 17 × 13 cm at 300 dpi
jesolo-san-giovanni-battista-facciata
Sold by Photo: Stefano Vigolo
€3.00
2048 × 1536 px · JPG · 429.8 KB
prints 17 × 13 cm at 300 dpi