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This is the church of Santa Maria della Salute, in Venice.

Over the centuries, diseases have contributed mightily to great art and architecture.

The church of Santa Maria della Salute is a case in point. In October of 1630, after nearly a third of Venice's 150,000 citizens had been killed by plague, the Venetian Senate made an offer to God: "Stop the plague, and we'll build a church to honor the Virgin Mary."

God came through, or maybe the onset of cooler weather reduced the population of plague-ridden fleas. Whatever the reason, the plague was stopped in its tracks. The Venetian authorities honored their promise by giving the Virgin a prime chunk of real estate near the tip of Dorsoduro, where the Grand Canal merged with St. Mark's Basin.

In the resulting competition for a church design, the winner was an unknown architect named Baldassare Longhena, who had proposed a massive octagonal basilica that combined elements of Venetian Byzantine architecture with domes inspired by St. Peter's in Rome. Longhena described his design as "strange, worthy, and beautiful...in the shape of a round 'machine' such as had never been seen, or invented either in its whole or in part from any other church in the city."

Source: Europeforvisitors.com