The church is a basilica in the classical Renaissance style and its brilliant white marble gleams above the blue water of the lagoon opposite the Piazzetta di San Marco and forms the focal point of the view from every part of the Riva degli Schiavoni.

The work was not finished before the death of Palladio in 1580, but the body of the church was complete by 1575 except for the choir behind the altar and the facade.

The façade is brilliantly white and represents Palladio's solution to the difficulty of adapting a classical temple facade to the form of the Christian church, with its high nave and low side aisles, which had always been a problem.

Palladio's solution superimposed two facades, one with a wide pediment and architrave, extending over the nave and both the aisles, apparently supported by a single order of pilasters, and the other with a narrower pediment (the width of the nave) superimposed on top of it with a giant order of engaged columns on high pedestals.

This solution is similar to Palladio's slightly earlier facade for San Francesco della Vigna, where the other parts of the church had been designed by Sansovino.

The interior of the church is very bright, with massive engaged columns and pilasters on undecorated, white-surfaced walls.

Two very large paintings by Tintoretto relate to the institution of the Eucharist and are placed on either side of the presbytery, where they can be seen from the altar rail.

Edward Morgan Forster mentions San Giorgio Maggiore in the chapter "On Beauty" of his novel A Passage to India, where the novel's hero Cyril Fielding contrasts what he perceives as lack of equilibrium in Indian buildings with the perfection of Italian architecture: and then came Venice.

San Giorgio standing on the island which could scarcely have risen from the waves without it, the Salute holding the entrance of a canal which, but for it, would not be the Grand Canal!Japanese artist Hirohiko Araki features the church in chapter 516 of his long-running manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (within the story arc Golden Wind).