th two fourteenth-century caps, and a
Renaissance pediment with two uprights of a chancel of Lombard work,
with three furrowed scrolls and crosses of the usual Syrian derivation.

The church was subsequently much altered, the transepts and apse have
vanished, and stones found which bear the marks of fire suggest that it
was burnt, either by the Venetians in 1243 or by the Genoese in 1379,
when they took the bronze doors away and burnt the archives. An
inscription on the front of the reliquary tomb, which is to the right of
the high-altar, and claims to contain the bodies of SS. Basil,
Demetrius, George, and Theodore, and of Salomon, king of Hungary, states
that Bishop Biagio Molin rebuilt the church in 1417. To this building
the retable of the high-altar, dedicated in 1469 and now in the north
aisle, belongs, still called La Madonna del Coro. It has figures of
saints in the upper row, half length, and full length in the lower row,
in high relief; the Madonna in the centre, and above her Christ over His
tomb, showing His wounds, and attended by the Virgin and S. John, with
fine tabernacle work and pierced pinnacles, all gilded except the flesh,
which is painted, and the ground behind the pinnacles, which is blue. It
is rather over-restored and looks quite new. The ciborium has cipollino
columns, antique caps, pointed arches, and Venetian dentil enrichments
with marble inlays. The nave arcade, of nine columns, has slightly
pointed arches, unmoulded except for a simple hood-mould and a kind of
engrailed crown above the abacus. The caps are for the most part late
fourteenth century in character, but some are antique. The columns have
been made up to the same size with plaster, and painted to imitate
granite, only a few having escaped. The last one on the south has a ring
round the centre; one base looks antique, many of them have spurs. The
restorations of 1640 and 1712 have obliterated all appearance of
antiquity. Bishop Giuseppe Maria Bottari, the last restorer, used so
many inscribed slabs in repairing the interior and building the
campanile that he was nicknamed "the sexton of inscriptions." There was
a cruciform baptistery to the west, the remains of which were destroyed
in 1850 in connection with the harbour works. To the north of the
cathedral is the communal cistern, which covers a great part of the site
of the early church of S. Thomas. In 1860 some reliquaries were found
here between the cistern and the cathedral s