At the western edge of Venice, where the city gives way to the working port, stands one of its oldest churches. San Nicolò dei Mendicoli was the church of a poor parish of fishermen and boatmen — the Nicolotti, who long formed one of the two rival factions of popular Venice and elected their own leader. The building keeps a rare external portico, once used to shelter the destitute, a squat campanile, and an interior of astonishing warmth: gilded wooden statues, a painted ceiling, dark canvases in the gloom. Neglected and severely damaged by damp, it was rescued in the twentieth century by an international restoration campaign that became a model for conservation work in the city. Filmed in 4K, the programme uses this church to tell a different Venice — not the Venice of doges and palaces, but that of the working people who made the city function.
