The richest ornamentation was applied to the arches and string courses, while plaques of sculpture, roundels and coats of arms adorned the facades.
Sculptured panels, with conventional motives, peacocks, eagles devouring hares, peacocks drinking from a cup on a tall pillar, are let into both exterior and interior walls, as are roundels of precious marbles, sawn from columns of porphyry, serpentine, verd antique, &c. The adoption of veneer for decoration prohibited any deep cutting, and almost all the sculpture is shallow.
We find it retaining some traces of Byzantine influence in the decorated surfaces of applied marbles, and in the roundels of porphyry and verd antique, while it also retained certain characteristics of Gothic, as, for instance, in the pointed arches of the Renaissance facade in the courtyard of the ducal palace designed by Antonio Rizzo (1499).
The facade has the characteristic circular pediment with a large west window surrounded by three smaller windows separated by two ornamental roundels in coloured marble and of geometric design.
Two of the bays contain round-headed windows; the other three are filled in with white marble adorned by crosses and roundels in coloured marble.