The parish church of Santo Stefano stood a few steps from the baptistery, which in reality was a small church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin of the Graces, built around the year 1000, this, and remained for a very long time the only baptistery in the city of Rovigo .
Inside there was a precious fresco of the Virgin of Grace with the Child, from the fifteenth century, now positioned on the altar of the Cathedral. The current physiognomy derives from the reconstruction of 1696 based on a project by the poet architect Girolamo Frigimelica.
The simple brick facade is unfinished despite repeated attempts to complete it. Despite this, the imposing octagonal dome built by Giuseppe Sabadini of 1791 dominates and completes the building.
Its baroque interior preserves important works of art, especially of a pictorial type, worth mentioning is the 15th century fresco depicting the Madonna delle Grazie, the canvas by Jacopo Palma the Younger which depicts the Risen Christ with Ss. Bellino and Stefano papa and the Virgin and Child preserved in the sacristy, another important canvas is the one depicting Sant'Anna, the Madonna and San Francesco Saverio of an anonymous painter of the sixteenth century, and above all of a high artistic level the Virgin Mary by Andrea Michieli also called Vicentino. Finally, do not miss the wonderful bronze candlestick by Jacopo Sansovino.
