€3.3M restoration of St. Mark's Basilica mosaics and marbles begins

The Italian Ministry of Culture has allocated €3.3 million for the restoration of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, funded under the 2021-2023 Strategic Plan for Major Cultural Heritage Projects. For the first time, the Procuratoria di San Marco acts as the contracting authority. The contract was awarded to RTI Lares Lavori di Restauro di Venezia, which won among 27 competing firms and will complete the work in two years and four months. The restoration targets the marble crusts of the narthex and the medieval mosaic floor in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament (south transept), damaged by high water. Before 2019, the basilica experienced an average of 110 high-water events per year; the November 2019 acqua alta severely harmed the north wing of the narthex and the floor around the high altar. The basilica, consecrated in 1094 as the doge's chapel, saw its facades clad in polychrome marbles and its five Byzantine domes topped with lead-covered wooden domes in the early 13th century. Conservation responsibility shifted over centuries: from the Procurators of San Marco (until the 18th century) to an Imperial Royal Commission under Austrian rule, and finally to the Procuratoria's fabriceria after the 1929 Concordat between Church and Italian state.