Piazzetta di San Marco and other Venice, Italy Things to Do Tips

It was the place where I first had the real feeling I was in Venice.
This is the place where people queue during the day to enter Basilica di San Marco.
There are expensive cafés and lots of pigeons.

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The 99 metres high tower is the oldest building on the Piazza San Marco. Work on it started in the ninth century. The belfry with the pointed roof, and the Loggeta - the small marble hall at the foot of the tower - were built in the sixteenth century. The whole building collapsed on July 14th,1902. The caretaker's cat was the only victim. In 1912 a completely rebuilt Campanile was opened. A lift can take you to a excellent view over the city.

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The 99 metres high tower is the oldest building on the Piazza San Marco. Work on it started in the ninth century. The belfry with the pointed roof, and the Loggeta - the small marble hall at the foot of the tower - were built in the sixteenth century. The whole building collapsed on July 14th,1902. The caretaker's cat was the only victim. In 1912 a completely rebuilt Campanile was opened. A lift can take you to a excellent view over the city.

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Piazza di San Marco is trapezoidal, and the Procuratie vecchie and Procuratie Nuove run along the two extensive sides. The Procuratie Vecchie runs along the north side of the square from the Clock tower and have kept their Renaissance features. They are followed by Ala Napoleonica. This was built in 1810 by the architect Giuseppe Soli on the site of the demolished San Geminiano church, which was built by Sansovino. The Procuratie Nuove runs along the west side of the square and includes the Libreria di San Marco, which was designed by Jacopo Sansovino at the request of the Venetian Republic to house the codicils donated to it by Cardinal Bessarione. The clock tower is at the start of the Merceria, the road that leads from Piazza di San Marco to the Campo di San Barolomeo. The name "Merceria" refers to the many shops on both sides of it. It still today the place to buy the finest local and international products. Piazza San Marco is as unique as its name: indeed it is the only “Piazza” in Venice as the others are campi. In those far off days when the Veneti people chose this land as the seat of their Government, at the beginning of the 9th century, and built their Ducal castle and later their Basilica, the piazza was much smaller, squeezed more or less between the facade of the church and a canal, now filled in, called the rio Batario. In time, about the end of the 12th century, the church di San Marco was enlarged, the Ducal Palace was turned into a "palacio" and the political and commercial power of Venice had become much stronger and more stable.
The Piazza put in order in this way, with herring-bone brick pavement until 1264, later with the modern type of Euganean trachyte with white stripes, which was used for the first time in 1723, from a design by Andrea Tirali, it becomes the most suitable place for fetes, cavalcades and ceremonies.

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