A descent on each side under the tribunes leads to the crypt under the raised choir. This is very small, but is divided into three aisles in width, and four bays in length. The central space is screened round jealously with close grilles reaching from floor to vault, so as to protect the shrine of S. Hermacora, which occupies the centre. But little light steals into this crypt, and that little has to find its way between rank weeds which grow up round the windows; but there is quite enough to reveal vaults covered with paintings of subjects, and to show as picturesque and beautiful an _ensemble_ as one need wish to see. Kneeling desks were placed round the shrine, but the cultus of S. Hermacora seems to be no longer popular, and the only pilgrims are curious visitors like ourselves. The paintings on the groining appeared to me to be of not earlier date than the fourteenth century, and are very cleverly contrived to suit the early vaults. The transepts remain to be mentioned. Each has a small eastern apse near the extreme end, and a tomb or shrine between this apse and the choir-tribune. These are of the thirteenth century, and are enormous blocks of stone, panelled and carved in front, and supported on four detached shafts. In the south transept there are fragments of a Byzantine screen round the altar in the small apse, which are of rare beauty and intricacy. The screen consisted of a solid base, breast-high, covered with carving, and upon which columns stood originally at intervals of six feet, just as in the screen at Torcello, of which I have given a view. There is an early painting of Our Lord, seated on a throne in the semi dome of this apse, and there are remains of an early wall-painting in the choir-apse, partly covered by a fifteenth-century picture in a good frame. The choir stalls are of elaborate intarsiatura work, and date from the end of the sixteenth century.