Venice, Italy
Piazza San Marco · PYAT-sa san MAR-ko
The only square in Venice that Venetians call a square. A gold church at one end, a brick tower that fell down and was put back, a clock with two bronze giants, and arcades on three sides. A few times a year the sea comes up through the paving.
Photo: Benh LIEU SONG, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
You are standing on grey stone with lines of white running through it, in a space with walls on every side and no roof. There are no cars and no trees. Ahead is a church with five domes, and beside it a red brick tower with a green point.
The square took this shape in 1177, when a canal was filled in to double its size. In China it was the Southern Song (1127–1279), and the philosopher Zhu Xi was forty-seven.
Each of these has its own page, with its own story, pictures and visiting notes.
The square is public and free at every hour. The buildings round it are visited one by one, each with its own ticket.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| St Mark's Basilica | From 10 euros; see its own page |
| The bell tower | 15 euros, by lift |
| The clock tower | Outside free; inside by guided visit booked ahead |
| The arcades and cafés | Free to walk; the cafés charge for the music |
| The Correr Museum | Ticket of the city museums, shared with the Doge's Palace |
| The Piazzetta and the two columns | Free |
| The Doge's Palace | Ticket of the city museums |
| The waterfront | Free |
For a thousand years Venice was a republic of merchants, ruled by an elected duke called the doge. This was its front room. The church was the doge's chapel. The palace beside it was his house and the seat of government. The long buildings on either side were the offices of the nine officials who ran the church and its money.
Everything Venice wanted the world to see happened here: processions, executions, bullfights, the arrival of kings. The republic ended in 1797, when Napoleon's army reached the lagoon.
This is also the lowest ground in the city. When a high tide meets a south wind, water rises through the drains and the square becomes a lake.
"Venice is full of squares." It has one piazza. Every other open space is a campo, a field, because that is what they once were.
"The bell tower is a thousand years old." It fell down in 1902. What you see was finished in 1912, copied brick for brick.
"Napoleon called it the finest drawing room in Europe." The phrase is everywhere and no one has found it in anything he wrote or was heard to say.
"You can feed the pigeons." It has been forbidden since 2008, and there is a fine.
"The floods are drowning the square more every year." Since October 2020 a line of steel gates at the mouths of the lagoon has been raised against the highest tides. The square still gets wet at lower ones.
The stops go once round the square and then out to the water.
The square is not a rectangle. It is about 175 metres long, 82 metres wide at the church and 57 at the far end. The narrowing makes the church look closer and larger when you enter from the west.
Until 1723 the ground was brick. The present paving is dark volcanic stone from the hills near Padua, with bands of white stone from across the Adriatic. The white lines marked where the guilds set up their market stalls.
The tower is 98.6 metres high. It was a lighthouse for ships and a watchtower, and its five bells ran the day: one to start work, one for noon, one to call the senators, one for the council, and one, the smallest, for an execution.
On the morning of 14 July 1902 a crack that had been watched for days ran up the wall. The square was cleared. At 9:47 the tower sank straight down into a heap of bricks. No one was hurt. The caretaker's cat was the only death.
The city council voted the same evening to rebuild it "as it was, where it was". The new tower opened on 25 April 1912, St Mark's day. It has a lift.
The clock was finished in 1499. On the roof two bronze men, each two and a half metres tall, swing hammers at a bell. They have gone dark with age and are called the Moors. One strikes two minutes before the hour and one two minutes after: the past and the future.
The blue and gold face shows the hour, the sign of the zodiac and the phase of the moon. A merchant city needed to know the tides, and the tides follow the moon.
The arch under the clock is the start of the Mercerie, the street of shops that runs to the Rialto bridge. It was the richest street in Europe when the clock was new.
The long building on the north side, with fifty arches, was built in the early 1500s. The one on the south is a century younger. They housed the procurators of St Mark, who ranked next after the doge.
Under the south arcade is Florian, opened on 29 December 1720 and in business ever since. Coffee had come to Europe through Venice, from the Ottoman lands. Florian was the one coffee house that admitted women, which is why Casanova, the Venetian adventurer, liked it.
The tables in the square have small orchestras. If you sit down while they play, a charge for the music is added to your bill. It is printed on the menu.
The west end was closed by a church designed by the architect Sansovino, who is buried in the basilica. In 1807 it was pulled down. The new wing gave the French governor a grand staircase and a ballroom.
Today the stairs lead to the Correr Museum, the museum of the city: maps, coins, the doges' robes, and the shoes on tall platforms that Venetian ladies wore above the mud.
Walk past the bell tower towards the water. This smaller space is the Piazzetta. At its end stand two columns of granite, set up about 1172. They were the city's gate: everyone of importance arrived by boat and walked in between them.
On one column is a winged lion, the sign of St Mark and of Venice. It is far older than the city. Tests of the bronze in 2024 traced its copper to the Yangtze valley, and its shape is like the guardian beasts placed in tombs in Tang China. How it reached Venice, nobody knows.
On the other is St Theodore, the city's first patron, standing on a crocodile. Criminals were executed between the two columns. Venetians still walk round, not through.
Stand at the edge of the quay. The stone is less than a metre above the normal level of the lagoon. In autumn and winter, a few times a year, the tide rises higher than that. A siren sounds across the city, and raised walkways of planks are laid over the square.
On 4 November 1966 the water reached 194 centimetres and stayed for a day. On 12 November 2019 it reached 187. Since 2020 seventy-eight steel gates lying on the sea bed can be raised to close the lagoon when a tide of more than 110 centimetres is forecast.
Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee; And was the safeguard of the west: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
William Wordsworth, On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, 1807
| Year | Here | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| 828 | Venetians bring home a body said to be St Mark's and build a church for it | Tang China (618–907): the poet Bai Juyi is fifty-six |
| 1177 | The square is doubled in size; pope and emperor make peace in front of the church | Southern Song China; in Cambodia, Angkor is sacked by an army from the east |
| 1499 | The clock tower is finished | Ming China (1368–1644); Vasco da Gama comes home from India by sea, the route that will take the spice trade away from Venice |
| 1609 | Galileo shows his telescope from the bell tower | Ming China: the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, an Italian, is living in Beijing |
| 1720 | Florian opens | Qing China, the Kangxi reign; in London the South Sea Bubble bursts |
| 1797 | Napoleon ends the republic after 1,100 years | Qing China: the Qianlong emperor has just given up the throne; George Washington leaves office |
| 1902 | The bell tower falls | The last years of the Qing (1644–1912); the year after the first Nobel prizes |
| 1966 | The worst flood on record | The Cultural Revolution begins in China; the same storm floods Florence |
| 2020 | The sea gates are raised for the first time | The year of the pandemic; the square is empty for months |
Films from official channels, played from YouTube. Nothing is loaded until you press play.
These are stories people tell about this place. They are legends, not history, and each one says where it comes from.
Three columns were brought from the East by ship. One slid into the lagoon as it was unloaded and lies in the mud to this day. The other two lay on the quay for years because no one could raise them, until an engineer did it with wet ropes that shortened as they dried.
Source: Venetian chronicles from the fourteenth century
The engineer was offered any reward he liked. He asked for the right to keep gaming tables between the two columns, the only place in Venice where dice were allowed. The government agreed, and then made the same spot the place of execution, so that no one would wish to linger.
Source: Venetian tradition, told by Francesco Sansovino in 1581
When the clock was finished, the senate had the eyes of the two men who made it put out, so that they could never build another like it for any other city.
Source: Venetian popular legend; the records show the makers were paid and pensioned
A young baker found a dead man in the street at dawn, was taken for the murderer and was hanged between the columns. The real killer confessed later. Two small lamps on the side of the church have burned for the boy ever since.
Source: Venetian legend, set in 1507
Later, people who live here will be able to add the stories they grew up with, and say which of these they have heard.
Last checked 2026-11-12. The basilica's own ticket site (tickets.basilicasanmarco.it) for the bell tower, as shown in November 2026; the square itself is a public place.
Checked 2026-11-12
Opening hours are given in the local time of the place. Prices are in the local currency. The figure after ≈ is approximate, at exchange rates checked on 9 November 2026, in .
Stand at the site, sign in, press the button, and collect its stamp. Your browser will ask to use your location. It is sent to us once to confirm that you are at the site; we keep how far you were from it, not the spot where you stood.
Your stamps are saved to your account, so they follow you to any device. Checking from a browser cannot rule out every false location; stricter checks arrive with the app.
Photos here show the place, not people. Each one is credited to the visitor who took it and appears after our team has looked at it. A photo with you in it belongs under “I am here”.
