St Mark's Basilica is the most famous of the churches of Venice and one of the best known examples of Byzantine architecture. It lies on St Mark's Square, adjacent and connected to the Doge's Palace and has been the seat of the Patriarch of Venice, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice since 1807.
To build St. Mark's Church, Venice brought the spiritual and material heritage of Byzantium to the West.
The Greek cross plan stands on a structure which in the longitudinal nave has basilica architectural motifs: the vertical arm of the cross is greater than those of the transepts and the altar is in the apse area. Above the cross are five cupolas, according to the eastern model, as a symbol of God's presence.
Organisation of the space is rich in evocations that are not found in other Byzantine churches. The interior has a unitary sequence subdivided into individual spatial orchestrations to which gold background mosaics ensure continuity and the church's special way of being.
The architectural idea underlying St. Mark's Church is deeply rooted in the cultural context of Constantinople. The model was the Church of the Twelve Apostles, built in Justinian's day and destroyed in 1462. The present-day church was built on the remains of the first and second church in the space available between the Ducal Palace and the Church of St. Theodore (810-819). A bold solution which in the 11th century united memories - the tomb and its remains of St. Mark's body - with the Greek cross plan of a great new church with five cupolas, the prestigious "Ducal Chapel". In St. Mark's each cupola rests on four great vaults whose weight is borne by four pillars. The interior has a unitary sequence subdivided into individual spatial orchestrations to which gold background mosaics ensure continuity and the church's special way of being. Unlike the Greek models the altar, which is joined to the evangelist's tomb, is not in the centre of the cross but beneath the eastern, presbytery cupola. The church subsequently underwent substantial modifications: the narthex was added, a Gothic rosette was opened towards the Ducal Palace and the window of the horses opened in the façade, thus altering the atmosphere of the old building. Each modification was connected with structural, political or prestige reasons.
St. Mark's church today is considered the living heritage of Roman, Byzantine and Venetian culture. It may be considered, ideally, as being enclosed in a quadrilateral space measuring almost 60 metres each side. The plan is Greek cross. Both arms of the cross are subdivided into nave and two aisles.
Beyond the transept, delimited by the iconostasis, the area of the eastern arm is occupied by the presbytery in the centre and, at the sides, by the chapels of St. Peter to the north and St. Clement to the south.
At the bottom of the presbytery, abutting the apse, there is an altar on a platform once raised by five steps, for deposition of the Most Holy. The transept extremities close with a rectilinear wall. To the north they take in the walls of the St. Isadore and Mascoli chapels, and to the south those of access to the Ducal Palace. On the west and north sides the church is surrounded by a narthex in which, at the southern end, there was the "sea gate", now occupied by the chapel of cardinal Giovambattista Zen.
The main entrance from the west has a late 10th century wooden door faced with sheet copper and older bronze grilles. To right and left are the St. Clement and St. Peter entrances. At the northern end of the façade, the St. Alipius entrance. In the northern arm the Door of Flowers is also closed with a bronze gate.
The church is accessed from the narthex by means of four doors: the central one, the St. Clement and the St. Peter, in correspondence to the chapels of the same name and, to the north the Door of the Virgin or of St. John.
The baptistery, built on the southern frontage at the limit of the sea gate, between the gate and an ancient corner-tower, features two cupolas and a vault connecting it to the structures of the Zen chapel. The tower, of uncertain function and transformed with the creation of the third St. Mark's, is connected internally to the church and to the walls of the building incorporated into the head of the south transept. Today it houses the Treasure and the Sanctuary with the relics.
Access to the sacristy, enlarged at the end of the 15th century, is from the presbytery and St. Peter's chapel. Adjacent to the sacristy there is the 15th century church of St. Theodore.
The nave and two aisle crypt with apse is beneath the presbytery and the side chapels. In the nave, beneath the high altar, there is the ancient chapel where the evangelist's remains were kept. The crypt has an intersecting barrel-vault ceiling supported by small columns with simple basket-decorated Byzantine capitals datable to between the end of the 10th and the 11th centuries. To the west of the crypt, an area known as the "retro-crypt " contains the tombs of all the patriarchs of Venice since 1807.
As a result of repeated fires the women's galleries that covered the aisles of the west, north and south arms of the cross were eliminated. The only remaining women's galleries are those above the wall structures: above the narthex, the chapel of St. Isadore, the palace boundary walls and the semi-domes of the apses in the chapels of St. Peter and St. Clement. All the rest have been reduced to simple passageways.
Two areas of the church may be defined: the ducal area in the south transept, closely connected with the palace by passages and windows at various levels, and the St. Mark's primicerius' and priests' area in the north transept, linked to their respective lodgings. The height and size of the buildings around the church reduced the amount of light reaching the latter, so at the beginning of the 15th century the Serenissima decided to create two great openings: the window of the horses on the façade and the rosette in the south transept overlooking the doge's palace.
The cupolas - the Ascension in the centre, the Prophets over the presbytery, the Pentecost over the nave, the St. John over the north arm and the St. Leonard over the south arms of the transept consist of half-spheres in masonry standing on great support vaults. Around 1260 the masonry cupolas were covered by wooden ones of larger size topped with a small cupola bearing a gilded cosmic cross.
The floor of St. Mark's church is an actual marble carpet spread over no less than 2099 square metres.
Following the tenets of Byzantine religious architecture, St. Mark's too complies with the principle of bipartition into earthly zone (floor and walls) and celestial part (vaulted ceilings and cupolas). Purpose and function are underlined by the different materials used to cover the masonry. The upper part of the building has a strikingly celestial and metaphysical connotation due to the light produced by the tesserae in coloured glass or gold leaf, symbolising the light of paradise, whereas the lower zone underlines earthliness with the solidity of the marbles of the walls (rich in colours, but dull ones, and in geometrical signs) and of the floor.
The floor of St. Mark's includes opus sectile (obtained by setting out pieces of different coloured marble to create the most varied geometrical forms) and opus tessellatum (obtained with tiny pieces of marble or glass used to create floral motifs or animal figures), with a clear prevalence of the former technique over the latter. Both techniques have their origins in antiquity, as documented by Varro, Vitruvius and Pliny. Coexistence of the two in St. Marks testifies to the great wealth of the dukedom: it not only bought up highly precious marbles but also secured a workforce of craftsmen who, in all probability, were brought to Venice from Constantinople or Byzantine Greece, as were the architects and mosaicists.
The overall floor consists of various panels, of different sizes, with geometrical and figured motifs. Certain surfaces in well illuminated zones, such as the areas beneath the Pentecost and Ascension cupolas, are faced with great slabs of Greek Proconnesio marble, one of the first marbles to be cut into slabs.
The geometrical organisation is regular and the positioning observes the principles of symmetry where possible.
The nave has a sequence of larger fairly linear decorations. Near the entrance there is a large herring-bone decorated rectangle which includes a smaller central rectangle with similar decoration. Farther on towards the presbytery there is a second large rectangle that contains two rows of rhombuses and polychrome rote ("wheels") punctuated by four squares alternated with three rhombuses.
The arms of the transept contain two squares: the northern includes decorations of five large Byzantine rote and four small ones interposed between them; in the southern, a lozenge-design carpet with frame is followed towards the south by four Byzantine rote.
In this rigorously geometrical scheme there are also, on the margins, symbolic animals and floral elements: outstanding for their chromatic preciousness and refined execution are two pairs of peacocks in the small southern or right aisle which have been preserved almost intact.
Along the arc of the Upper Adriatic there are many examples of mosaic floors. But the floor of St. Mark's stands out for its grandeur and the preciousness and rarity of the eastern, western and North African marbles employed, as well as for the splendour of the enamels and the variety of scenes drawn from symbolism and mediaeval literature, or inspired by oriental and western textiles.
The whole is based on an iconographic programme which is very complex for us but which could be more easily intuited by the people of the Middle Ages.
The marble elements decorating the basilica are of extreme interest from the viewpoint of both the coverings and the liturgical furnishings. Most of these are reused materials taken chiefly from buildings in Constantinople or associated regions. Importation to Venice of these items was documented as early as the 9th century, but it was after the venture of the Crusade of 1204 that the flow of marbles became more intense.
The late-antique criterion was followed in decorating St. Mark's. As regards marbles this also took into account their features of colour and composition which were used with a symbolic function. Marbles were employed to underline determined functions or the importance of certain spaces in accordance with a practice which from late antiquity was to survive in the symbolic-decorative tradition of the Byzantine empire and also, in part, in the Middle Ages in the west.
The most precious stone was red porphyry, linked to the imperial symbology of the late-antique period and associated with purple, a substance and colour that symbolised royalty and divinity. In the period when the Venetians built St. Mark's, purple, and consequently porphyry, were linked to a powerful imperial and divine symbology proper to the Byzantine empire: an object made of porphyry was something connected with an imperial purchaser. In St. Mark's the use of porphyry is associated with solutions whose purpose was to underline Venice's political greatness and glory, without any religious implications: such as the group of the Tetrarchs in the corner of the Treasury, highlighting the entrance towards the ducal palace; the columns decorating the central door of the basilica's west façade, almost like a triumphal arch, or at the corners of the façade as if delimiting a royal space. The only porphyry elements in the interior are in the so-named southern "ambo", originally the doge's tribune, another symbol of power. Sometimes when porphyry was not available, Iassense marble was used. Dark red with white veins it was especially employed in wall coverings but with a solely decorative intention.
Another precious marble with violet or reddish markings - Docimeum or pavonazzetto marble - is always used in a privileged position, such as the apse columns.
After porphyry in the hierarchy of imperial marbles come the green marbles (e.g. serpentine, used in St. Mark's for small objects, or Thessaly green) followed by Aquitaine white and black. Thessaly green and Aquitaine white-black are used in an imperial context for sarcophagi and covering slabs. Aquitaine breccia is present in St. Mark's in the form of column shafts decorating the narthex doors and the main portals of the west and south façade. Green Thessaly breccia, much more in evidence, is used not only for column shafts but also for covering slabs, elements of liturgical furnishings such as the northern ambo for liturgical readings and the altar ciborium. There is also an altar mensa in Thessaly green, used as wall covering on the north façade, and a slab of the same marble, perhaps from a sarcophagus, inserted into the Treasury wall.
Lastly, veined marbles were used with a decorative function, exploiting the pattern of the veining itself. For example, the columns in Proconnesio, a white marble with greyish veins, are set out in such a way as to respect correspondence and symmetry on the basis of the horizontal pattern of the veining. As for wall coverings, the slabs were cut in such a way that the veining formed geometric decorations. Clear examples may be seen in the interior coverings where the veining of the slabs form broad zigzag or lozenge fascias laid out vertically and horizontally.
Admission: Golden Altar: € 1,50, reduced € 1. Admission Treasure: € 2, reduced € 1.
Free visit on booking (Basilica) two days before the date of the visit
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From April until October: Free guided visits only by reservation at: Ufficio Diocesano Pastorale Turismo e Pellegrinaggi tel. (+39)0412702421, please call only Tuesday and Thursday morning.
Left baggage service and preparation to the visit of the Basilica
For security reasons, it is strictly forbidden to enter the Basilica with luggages and backpacks as well as to leave them outside the Basilica. A left luggage experimental service has been created at the Ateneo San Basso in Calle San Basso 315/A, with the following timetable:
weekday from 10am to 4.30pm
holidays: from 2pm to 4pm
At the Ateneo San Basso it will be possible to assist to the projection of a viedo documentary as preparation to the visit of the Basilica (free service)
The service of left luggage office can be used free of charge only by visitors of the Basilica of Saint Mark. Visitors must therefore collect their belongings immediately after leaving the Basilica

Piazza San Marco, often known in English as St Mark's Square, is the principal square of Venice.
A remark often attributed to Napoleon (but perhaps more correctly to Alfred de Musset) calls the Piazza San Marco "the drawing room of Europe." It is the only great urban space in a European city where human voices prevail over the sounds of motorized traffic, which is confined to Venice's waterways. It is the only urban space called a piazza in Venice; the others, regardless of size, are called campi.
As the central landmark and gathering place for Venice, Piazza San Marco is extremely popular with tourists, photographers and pigeons.
The Piazza originated in the 9th century as a small area in front of the original St Mark's Basilica. It was enlarged to its present size and shape in 1177, when the Rio Batario, which had bounded it to the west, and a dock, which had isolated the Doge's Palace from the square, were filled in. The rearrangement was for the meeting of Pope Alexander III and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
The Piazza has always been seen as the centre of Venice. It was the location of all the important offices of the Venetian state, and has been the seat of the archbishopric since the 19th century. It was also the focus for many of Venice's festivals. It is a greatly popular place in Italy even today.
The Piazza is dominated by the Basilica, the Doge's Palace and (illustration, left below), and by the Basilica's campanile, which stands apart from it.
The buildings around the Piazza, anti-clockwise from the Grand Canal, are the Doge's Palace, St Mark's Basilica, St Mark's Clocktower, the Procuratie Vecchie, the Napoleonic Wing of the Procuraties, the Procuratie Nuove, St Mark's Campanile and Logetta and the Biblioteca Marciana. Most of the ground floor of the Procuraties is occupied by cafés, including the Caffè Florian and Gran Caffè Quadri. The Correr Museum and the Museum of Archaeology are located in some of the buildings of the Piazza. The Venetian Mint lies beyond the Biblioteca Marciana on the riva or bank of the Grand Canal. The last of these buildings were completed under Napoleonic occupation, although the campanile has since been rebuilt.
The Piazza was paved in the late 13th century with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern. Bands of light-colored stone ran parallel to the long axis of the main piazza. These lines were probably used in setting up market stalls and in organizing frequent ceremonial processions. This original pavement design can be seen in paintings of the late Middle Ages and through the Rennaissance, such as Gentile Bellini's Procession in Piazza San Marco of 1496.
In 1723 the bricks were replaced with a more complex geometrical pavement design composed of a field of dark-colored igneous trachyte with geometrical designs executed in white Istrian stone, similar to travertine. Squares of diagonally-laid blocks alternated with rectangular and oval designs along broad parallel bands. The squares were pitched to the center, like a bowl, where a drain conducted surface water into a below-grade drainage system. The pattern connected the central portal of the Basilica with the center of the western opening into the piazza. This line more closely parallels the façade of the Procuratie Vechhie, leaving a nearly triangular space adjacent to the Procuratie Nuove with its wider end closed off by the Campanile. The pattern continued past the campanile, stopping at a line connecting the three large flagpoles and leaving the space immediately in front of the Basilica undecorated. A smaller version of the same pattern in the Piazzetta paralleled Sansovino's Library, leaving a narrow trapezoid adjacent to the Doge's palace with the wide end closed off by the southwest corner of the Basilica. This smaller pattern had the internal squares inclined to form non-orthogonal quadrilaterals.
The design was laid out by Venetian architect Andrea Tirali. Little is known about Tirali's reasoning for the particulars of the design. Some have speculated that the pattern was still used to regulate market stalls, or at least to recall their former presence in the square. Others believe the pattern may have been drawn from oriental rugs, which were a popular luxury item in this trading center. The overall alignment of the pavement pattern serves to visually lengthen the long axis and reinforce the position of the Basilica at its head. This arrangement mirrors the interior relationship of nave to altar within the cathedral.
As part of the design, the level of the piazza was raised by approximately one meter to mitigate flooding and allow more room for the internal drains to carry water to the Grand Canal.
In 1890, the pavement was renewed "due to wear and tear". The new work closely follows Tirali's design, but eliminated the oval shapes and cut off the west edge of the pattern to accommodate the Napoleanic wing at that end of the Piazza.
The Piazza San Marco is the lowest point in Venice, and as a result during the Acqua Alta the "high water" from storm surges from the Adriatic, or even heavy rain, it is the first to flood. Water pouring into the drains in the Piazza runs directly into the Grand Canal. This is ideal during heavy rain, but during the acqua alta it has the reverse effect, with water from the canal surging up into the Square.
The part of the Piazza between the Doge's Palace and the Biblioteca Marciana, Jacopo Sansovino's Library, is the Piazzetta dei Leoncini. It is open to the lagoon at the mouth of the Grand Canal, and is known for the columns of Venice's two patrons, Marco and Todaro, that stand by the water's edge: on them are the lion of Saint Mark and the statue of Saint Teodoro of Amasea, "Santodaro" to the Venetians, who is standing on the sacred crocodile of Egypt. Theodore of Amasea is less well known than the Evangelist: he burned down a temple of Cybele as an act of Christian piety and was martyred for it. These columns constituted the official gateway to Venice; when there were no official guests in the city, gambling was permitted in the space between the columns. It was also the site of executions in the city.
Since 1480, three ships' masts have faced the waterfront. The banner of St Mark is flown from them on feast days.
Across the expanse of water (the Bacino di San Marco) is the Punta della Salute to the left of Baldassarre Longhena's "Santa Maria della Salute." The Dogana di mare ("Customs' House") has given its name to every Italian customs shed, much as Venice also had the original Arsenal.

St Mark's Campanile is the bell tower of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, located in the square (piazza) of the same name.
A tower was first built at the present site in the eighth century as a watch tower for the dock which then occupied what is now the Piazzetta dei Leoncini. It was repeatedly rebuilt over the succeeding centuries.
The campanile reached its present form in 1514. As it stands today, however, the tower is a reconstruction, completed in 1912 after the collapse of 1902.
The 100 metre-high tower consists of a sturdy brick shaft, an observation platform, a section housing the five bells, and a pyramidal spire, topped by a golden angel weathervane.
The logetta which housed the barracks of the guard for the Doge's Palace lies beneath the campanile. It was built by Sansovino, completed in 1549 and extended in 1663.
On July 14, 1902, the campanile collapsed completely, also demolishing the logetta. Remarkably no one was killed. It was decided to rebuild the tower exactly as it was, with some internal reinforcement to prevent future collapse. The reconstructed campanile was opened on St Mark's Day, April 25, 1912.

Between the Campanile and the Pool of San Marco opens the Piazzetta of San Marco: in far-off times, it seems that the water came into this space in such a way as to constitute a harbour and to bathe the base of the Campanile and the very foot of the Church of St. Mark. One side of the Piazzetta is occupied by Sansovino Library: this work began in 1537 when the Procurators of San Marco decided to build a new palace by the side of the old hostels and the bakery. Jacopo Sansovino completed the first part of the palace in 1554 and Vincenzo Scamozzi in 1588, after Sansovino's death, took up the work without modifying the original idea. At the 17th arch of the Sansovino Library there is the entrance to the former Palazzo di Zecca (the Mint) now the National Marciana Library (since 1904).

One of the columns is topped by a modern copy of a statue of St Theodore, the patron saint of Venice when it was dependent on Byzantium; the original, now on show in a corner of one of the Palazzo Ducale’s courtyards, was a compilation of a Roman torso, a head of Mithridates the Great, and miscellaneous bits and pieces carved in Venice in the fourteenth century (the dragon included).The winged lion on the other column is an ancient 3000-kilo bronze beast that was converted into a lion of St Mark by jamming a Bible under its paws.

The Moors’ Clock Tower is one of the most famous architectural landmarks in Venice, standing over an arch that leads into what is the main shopping street of the city, the old Merceria. It marks both a juncture and a division between the various architectural components of St. Mark’s Square, which was not only the seat of political and religious power but also a public space and an area of economic activity, a zone that looked out towards the sea and also played a functional role as a hub for the entire layout of the city.
In short, the Tower and its large Astronomical Clock, a masterpiece of technology and engineering, form an essential part of the very image of Venice. For more than five hundred years, they have measured out the flow of life and history within the city.
From the archway at ground level, the vertical structure rises on a rectangular base of around 9 x 6metre through a quadruple series of scaled architectural orders to a terrace with the statues of the Moors. At the time of its construction, it marked a clear break with the architectural language and layout of St. Mark’s Square, which was still substantially as it had been created in the time of Sebastiano Ziani (12th cent.); the appearance of that series of old porticoed structures is known to us from the account of them given in Gentile Bellini’s painting The Procession of the Holy Cross.
Following rulings handed down in 1500, and reiterated in 1503, the two side wings to the tower - culminating in two balustraded terraces - were built over the next five years. It should, however, be noted that it was not until after the fire of 1512 that plans got underway to rebuild the Vecchie Procuratie alongside (demolition of the existing structure started in February 1513).
So for more than a decade the Clock Tower stood alone, as a sort of manifesto of a short-lived local-bred school of humanist architecture (one can see it in this isolated state in a very atmospheric Carpaccio drawing, now in a private collection in Zurich). But the Tower was also to play a key role in the overall urban layout of the city, being an essential point of focus along the two main sight-lines of approach (along the Merceria or from St. Mark’s Square itself). From St. Mark’s it stands as a triumphal archway and monument marking access to the city’s main commercial artery; from the Merceria, it serves as a sort of telescope, offering a perceptive view that takes in the seats of political power and the city’s waterfront.
More or less convincing evidence has been brought forward to attribute the structure to Mauro Codussi. The design of the architectural orders is similar to that which can be seen in some of his other buildings; the same can also be said of the architectural nuances in design, and the sure way in which the ornamentation of the tower is subordinate to the structure as a whole (this decoration is particularly rich and perhaps eclectic, with various artists being involved in the production of the clock faces and the celebratory motifs included within the tower).
In the mid eighteenth century Giorgio Massari raised the side wings above the terraces and added new balustrades; at the same time eight columns were added, reducing the light through the trabeation at ground level (this addition was almost certainly not the work of Tommaso Temanza, as is often claimed, but of a lesser-known architect, Andrea Camerata). However, neither of these changes could really disturb the power of the original design; though the whole was made rather heavier (above all, by the reiteration of the small paired windows and of the balustrade seen against the sky). The work on the interior of the structure that was carried out in the nineteenth century (at the same time as that on the mechanism of the clock itself) was much more drastic: the wooden stairs were torn out and replaced with spiral staircases in metal, and the roofing of larch and lead sheeting was replaced with brick vaults and marble slabs (even the statues of the Moors were raised about a metre above their original level). Overall, the structure and appearance of the Tower were on that occasion subjected to an “up-date” that used materials and decoration which were not in keeping with the original.

This Palace was the residence of Doge, the political chief of Venice, and seat of the government of Serenissima Republic, other than the Court of Justice and the prison.
It was built during the XIV century, but it was enlarged and deeply modified several times up to the XVII century. The facades are covered with white and pink marbles, cadenced at the noble floor by a Gothic fretworked loggia of great elegance. In the corners there are some sculptures in alto-relievo.
The entrance is the Porta della Carta (Paper Door, so called maybe with reference to the bureaucracy) that gets into a courtyard with arcades called Foscari, by the name of the Doge who made it. From there starts the famous Scala dei Giganti (Giants' Stairway) which leads to the noble floor, with the statues of Neptune and Mars.
Inside the Palace, on top of the Scala d'Oro (Golden Stairway) by Sansovino, begins the series of halls following each other, among which the Sala delle Quattro Porte (Hall of Four Doors), Sala del Collegio (College Hall) and Sala dell'Anticollegio (Anti-College Hall), Sala del Senato (Senate Hall), Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci (Council of Ten), Sala della Bussola (Compass Hall), and the enormous Sala del Maggior Consiglio (Major Council Hall) which is 1340 square meters and was the seat of the Parliament of Serenissima Republic of Venice. In this hall are nowadays exposed the portraits of all Doges who ruled Venice and the Paradiso (Heaven) by Tintoretto.
Inside the Doge's Palace there were also the prisons: the Pozzi (Wells), the Piombi (Leads) and the Prigioni Nuove (New Prisons). The Pozzi were on the ground floor and were destined to criminals. The Piombi, so called because had leaded ceilings, were a kind of prison less hard for common people, where they could take their personal belongings and in some cases also things about their work.
Apr-oct 9.00-19.00
Nov-mar 9.00-17.00

The Bridge of Sighs or Ponte dei Sospiri is one of many bridges in Venice built in the 16th century. The bridge is of white limestone and has windows with stone bars, the summit of this enclosed bridge. It passes over the Rio di Palazzo and connects the old prisons to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace.
This was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment and given the name Bridge of Sighs in the 19th century, by Lord Byron. The name comes from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice out the window before being taken down to their cells. (In reality, the days of inquisitions and summary executions were over by the time the bridge was built, and the cells under the palace roof were occupied mostly by small-time criminals).