The golden mosaics
More than eight thousand square metres of gold across domes and walls.
Nino Barbieri โ CC BY-SA 2.5 ยท Another Believer โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Michael_Burgholzer โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Michael_Burgholzer โ CC BY-SA 4.0
Book a timed entry online from the official site for a small fee โ it can save an hour. Or arrive fifteen minutes before opening, or in the quieter final hour.
The main route passes through the centre and shows the mosaics. But the three extras โ loggia, Pala d'Oro, treasury โ are each a small fee and all worthwhile; take the loggia if you choose one.
The relics of St Mark, evangelist and founder of the Alexandrian church, were smuggled from there to Venice in 828 โ hidden, the story says, under pork so customs would not search. The whole church was built around them, and Mark's winged lion became the city's emblem.
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St Mark's is Venice's most famous building and its strangest: a church of Byzantine domes and golden mosaic that looks imported from Istanbul rather than Italy โ which is precisely its history. Venice built it in the Eastern manner because its wealth and identity came from Eastern trade, and dressed it in columns, marble and treasures its ships carried home from Constantinople. The interior is covered in more than eight thousand square metres of gold mosaic that ignites when the light comes in โ best seen towards midday, when it is fully lit. The church was built to hold the relics of St Mark, smuggled out of Alexandria by two Venetian merchants in 828 in a famous tale. The climb to the loggia over the entrance earns its small extra fee: the original bronze horses brought from Constantinople, and a view over the whole square.
More than eight thousand square metres of gold across domes and walls.
The original bronze horses upstairs, spoils of 1204.
The golden altarpiece set with thousands of gems โ medieval goldsmithing at its peak.
The whole of St Mark's Square seen from above the doorway.
Piazza San Marco, 30124 Venice