Chiesa di San Teonisto

The history of the building is connected to a small church that once stood by the river Sile – in the place where, according to legend, the boat carrying the bodies of the Saints Theonistus, Tabra and Tabratha landed. This church was gifted in 1045 by Uldericus, bishop of Treviso, to the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria Assunta of Mogliano. In 1180 the nuns built a monastery west of the church, where they moved to in the early 1400s. The most ancient construction of the San Teonisto church dates back to this age—1434, to be precise— and reflects a style that marks the transition from the Late Gothic to the Early Renaissance.

During the 17^th century, the nuns commissioned large paintings to renowned painters of the time such as Paolo Veronese, Palma Il Giovane, Carletto Caliari, Bartolomeo Scaligero, Pietro della Vecchia, Alessandro Varotari known as il Padovanino, and Antonio Fumiani.

After a troubled history marked by Napoleonic plundering, bombing raids during the Second World War, changes in use following its deconsecration and years of neglect, in 2010 it was purchased by Luciano Benetton, who later donated it to Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche.

The complex restoration works were entrusted to architect Tobia Scarpa, who rebuilt the roof that was destroyed in the 1944 bombings, and restored the space to the original single nave layout. Retractable seating platforms were designed and built to meet the new functional requirements. Every surviving trace of decoration, such as the refined series of frescoes, was recovered through painstaking and skilful restoration work.

The significant architectural and structural work, completed in 2017, was complemented by the restoration of nearly all the original paintings, which were then placed back in their original positions thanks to a thirty-year agreement between Fondazione Benetton and the Municipality of Treviso, in whose Civic Museum collections the canvases had been held, after they were removed from the church following the bombings.

Between the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, the church underwent a new phase of technical adaptation works and the restoration of the tympanum on the façade, as well as another important cultural operation: the acquisition of three new canvases, commissioned from the Bosnian painter Safet Zec, to complete the artistic cycle where the original paintings could not be recovered.