Longhena’s employment of the octagon and central plan for the Salute, while undoubtedly original and innovative, can also be viewed as a work within a historical tradition of architectural types and ideas. His choice of the octagon was not only an indicator of his understanding of the past, but also his ingenuity in distinguishing his own work from that of his predecessors and his contemporaries. The choice of design for the Salute follows in the continuation of what Howard calls “the persistence of the Venetian awareness” (Venice and the East 215). Through the Salute, the use of architecture as a tool to reaffirm the allusion of Venice can be seen through Longhena’s adoption of the octagonal plan for the Santa Maria della Salute.