Visiting Venice, how many opportunities for a single trip! Carnival, shopping, relax, a honeymoon or a romantic getaway. A trip to Venice offers endless possibilities of tourism, each of them thrilling and exciting! Piazza San Marco is undoubtedly the most famous symbol of Venice in the world, the beating heart of this magnificent city.
Great and magnificent, Piazza San Marco remains forever in the memory of those visiting Venice, with its magnificent Basilica so loved by all the Venetians Many international artists have made their home of Venice: Lord Byron, for example, used to eat at the Cafe Florian, a prestigious and expensive coffee in City center.
Piazza San Marco offers, of course, many eating solutions to the tourists such as cafes, bars, restaurants that can break your gondola rides, museums, monuments visits: be patient in dealing with long queues and be prepared for unexpected and important expenses, the magic of Venice will be able to pay you back for your efforts! If you have not so much time try instead to visit the Basilica and the Palace shortly before closing time: you might be able to enter in time making just a short queue and fully enjoy your visit.
Piazza San Marco is the heart of Venice. It provides the setting for two of the city's foremost buildings - Basilica San Marco and the Doge's Palace. The piazza's most distinctive monuments are the two columns near the waterfront, brought from the eastern mediterranean in 1170. One is topped with the lion of San Marco while the other with St Theodore, one of Venice's patron saints.
The area between the pillars was once a place of execution.
Its appearance is the result of projects more and more consciously by the City itself over the centuries. Here was located the high power for over a millennium. At the same time, it was the meeting point between different people, sharing the history of the Serenissima.
This is the largest and actually the only Town Square; by definition, the squares of Venice are called "fields" (campi).
The Piazza San Marco was a field at the beginning of the city, where the population grew vegetables and it was bordered by the Rio Batario, buried in the twelfth century. With the arrival of the relics of San Marco in Venice in 828, the Piazza starts to assume the role of the "heart of the City".
Where today stands the Piazzetta San Marco, next to the Palazzo Ducale, the Piazza was the basin. An architectural proof of this fact is the ancient walled port of water, access turned on the water, typical of Venetian buildings. In the twelfth century, after the burial of the Rio Batario, also the basin was buried to build the Piazzetta, where the columns coming from Constantinople were placed in San Teodoro and San Marco.
These changes were characterized by the awareness of the monumentality and superiority of the Venetian Republic. This had to be the "facade" of Venice: it had to welcome newcomers and salute those heading back home, leaving them with their mouths open. In the mid-15th century the Old Procuratie were built and, at the beginning of '500, the famous clock tower was built by Codussi. The architect Jacopo Sansovino, the builder of the Library, then completed the monumental aspect of the square.
The bell tower, another symbol of the city, was completed in 1514. Towards the end of '500, the city council decided to beautify the south side of the square; the work was entrusted to Scamozzi. These were the New Procuratie. The domination of Napoleon gave its final appearance to the Square. The New Procuratie were built, also known as the Napoleonic Wing, the symbol par excellence of the fall of the millennial power of the Serenissima.