Here at San Martino Urbano, Treviso gives you a neat lesson in survival. Tradition claimed this was the city’s very first chapel, raised by Felice, the first bishop of Treviso we can actually place in history, around the middle of the sixth century. Historians, being the sort of people who ruin legends for a living, now place its beginnings a little later, around the late seventh or early eighth century. The first written mention appears in the year six hundred seventy.
For centuries, this church answered to the monastery of San Teonisto at Casier, and through it to the abbey of San Zeno in Verona. Then the balance shifted. By the year twelve twenty-one, San Martino had become important enough to oversee several churches in the area. In thirteen twenty-one, control passed from the Benedictines of San Zeno to the Order of Saint John, the Hospitallers.
The medieval church kept a strongly Romanesque character, meaning solid forms and round arches, with almost none of Venice’s decorative flair. Then came the bombing of nineteen forty-four, which destroyed it. What you see now is Angelo Tramontini’s reconstruction, begun in nineteen sixty and consecrated on the fifth of December, nineteen seventy, by Bishop Antonio Mistrorigo.
The modern design refuses fake nostalgia. Two great pillars hold the roof and pull your eye upward toward the dome and forward toward the apse, the sacred end of the church. The staggered outer walls number fourteen, like the Stations of the Cross. Inside, the space is meant to feel like shelter beneath a vast tree... a nod to the mustard seed parable. And that bell tower beside it? That is the stubborn survivor, dating from around the late eleventh or early twelfth century, poised somewhere between Lombard Romanesque and Byzantine style.
San Martino stands here as both memorial and fresh start. When you’re ready, continue on and let Treviso unfold one layer at a time.
