LEAD FUNDER
Kowalski Family Foundation

GRAND BENEFACTORS
Amy and David Abrams
Howard and Roberta Ahmanson
The Behney Family in Memory of Sandra Pizzarello Fabbri

GRAND PATRON
A. Fenner Milton†

PATRONS
Sandra Ourusoff Massey through the Boston Chapter in honor of Melissa Conn and Frederick Ilchman
Carter and Susan Emerson
Jon and Barbara Landau
Essex Callaway Family Fund
The Boston Chapter of Save Venice

CONTRIBUTORS
Daniel Fitzgerald in Memory of Louis & Teresa Verza
MJ Fleischman
Dr. Carol Lynn MacGregor
Linda Cheverton Wick
Dr. Peter Weller

With additional support from: Susan and Bernard Pucker In Honor of Frederick & Cassandra Ilchman; Paulette Ryan; and Christine J. Steiner

This campaign is fully funded thanks to the generosity of the above donors.

The church of Santa Maria Assunta is the oldest surviving structure in the Venetian lagoon: an inscription in the presbytery records that it was founded in 639.  The Basilica was enlarged in the 9th and 11th centuries.

Thought to date to the 11th century, the mosaic floor of the presbytery in the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta is in a very fragile state of conservation. Extending circa 900 square feet (85 sq.m) between the iconostasis and the high altar, it is composed of precious marble and stone tesserae in geometric designs.

The Catholic Diocese of Venice plans to undertake essential repairs to the roof of the church in 2024, and the delicate mosaic floor will not be able to withstand the weight of the interior scaffolding required. The floor must therefore be conserved first, prior to the roof.

Work began in fall 2023 and is being led by master mosaic conservator Giovanni Cucco, who restored the apse wall mosaics of the church during Save Venice’s 50th Anniversary Campaign from 2020-2022.

The conservation entails detaching the mosaic floor in sections, removing and replacing the mortar, integrating missing mosaic tesserae, and placing each section on a new base. The detached portions are being treated in a temporary laboratory set up in the closed fourth nave of the church. Once the roof work has been completed in 2025, the restored mosaic segments will be reinstalled in the presbytery, on top of a new subfloor that will be created following mosaic floor building practices defined by Vitruvio in the 1st century.