San Marco and La Fenice

Piazza San Marco

The Republic's front room, ringed by its basilica, campanile, and palace.

You're standing in Piazza San Marco, the one square in Venice that locals simply call la Piazza. Everything that made the Republic rich, holy, and feared happened within these few hundred meters. Napoleon called it the drawing room of Europe, and on a clear morning the marble pavement still earns the title. Look around.

Saint Mark's Basilica closes the east end with its five domes and the four bronze horses above its central arch. Napoleon had those horses taken down and shipped to Paris in 1797; they came back after his defeat. The brick campanile on your right collapsed on the morning of 14 July 1902 and was rebuilt exactly as it was, where it was, reopening in 1912. The long colonnades behind you are the Procuratie, the old offices of the Republic's top administrators, and the open space running toward the water is the Piazzetta, the little square that carried the city down to the lagoon.

Basilica di San Marco

The Doges' chapel, built to hold the stolen relics of Saint Mark.

You're in front of Basilica di San Marco, the chapel of the Doges and the reliquary of the city's patron saint. The church was built to hold a stolen treasure. In 828, merchants brought the body of Saint Mark out of Alexandria, and the Republic raised its greatest church to receive him. The present structure, with its five eastern domes, was consecrated in 1094.

Look up at the facade. The four bronze horses above the central arch are spoils of the Fourth Crusade, hauled here from Constantinople after the city fell in 1204. Napoleon packed them off to Paris in 1797; they came home after his defeat. The horses you see today are copies.

The originals wait inside the museum, out of the salt air. The real spectacle is within, where thousands of square meters of gold-leaf mosaic cover the domes and walls. Sailors once called this the church of gold, a name that describes the light.

Campanile di San Marco

The brick tower Venetians call the master of the house, rebuilt after 1902.

To your left rises Campanile di San Marco, ninety eight point six meters of brick that Venetians call el paron de casa, the master of the house. A watchtower has stood on this spot since the late ninth century, but the tower you see now is barely a hundred years old. On the morning of 14 July 1902, the old campanile collapsed straight down into its own footprint. It fell without killing anyone, in a square that had been closed and guarded.

The Republic had been gone for a century, but the city voted to rebuild it exactly as it was, where it was, and the new tower opened on 25 April 1912, the feast of Saint Mark. The gilded angel on top is the Archangel Gabriel, a weathervane that has turned over the lagoon since the sixteenth century. An elevator now carries you up the shaft in about half a minute, and the view runs from the Alps to the Lido. On a clear day the whole plan of Venice, that maze of water and red roofs, opens below.