A walk with 22 stops, from St Mark's Square to Prigioni Nuove.
The stops
- St Mark's Square
It is the only space in Venice called ’Piazza’ - all the others are campi (Venetian squares) - because it wanted to be unique even in name.
- The vanished church of San Geminiano
Turn your back on the Basilica and look at the short side of the Square: the Napoleonic Wing today closes the space where for two and a half centuries stood San Geminiano, the church Jacopo Sansovino completed in 1557 and loved so much that he chose it as his tomb.
- Procuratie di San Marco
On three sides of St Mark’s Square runs the continuous rhythm of the Procuratie, the residences of the Procurators of St Mark - the Republic’s highest magistracy after the Doge, nine men divided into three offices: de supra, de citra and de ultra.
- Portico of the Napoleonic Wing (Ala Nuovissima)
The short side of St Mark’s Square, opposite the Basilica, is closed off by the Ala Nuovissima, known as the Napoleonic Wing.
- St Mark's Clocktower
In 1493 the Senate of the Serenissima decided that Venice deserved a new clock: the old one, in a niche of the Basilica, did not even have a dial and the hours could only be told by ear, through the strokes of the bell.
- Church of San Basso
Wedged between the buildings of the Clocktower, with its flank turned towards the Basilica, the little church of San Basso is one of the oldest in Venice: it was commissioned in 1076 by the tribunician Elia family, dedicated to St Sabbas the abbot and then to Bishop Bassus, martyr of Nice.
- Palazzo Patriarcale
Beside the basilica, overlooking the piazzetta dei Leoncini, the Palazzo Patriarcale is the seat of Venice’s curia — but it was born as a wing of secular power: in the early 17th century Bartolomeo Manopola built it to house the grand hall where the Signoria and the Senate held banquets, connected to the doge’s apartments by an elevated passageway behind the basilica’s apses.
- Chiesetta di San Teodoro
Behind the apse of the Basilica, in a little courtyard where few ever come, hides one of the smallest and most significant churches in Venice: the chiesetta (little church) of San Teodoro.
- Chiostrino di Sant'Apollonia
Thirty paces from the crowded parvis of the Basilica, behind the apses of San Marco, a discreet threshold opens onto one of the most surprising places in Venice: the Chiostrino di Sant’Apollonia (chiostrino means small cloister), the only Romanesque cloister surviving in the city.
- Tre Pili di Bronzo
Everyone raises their eyes to the gilded façade of the Basilica; almost nobody looks down.
- St Mark's Campanile
The Venetians affectionately call it el paròn de casa, the master of the house: ninety-eight and a half metres of red brick that have kept watch over the square for over a thousand years.
- Loggetta del Campanile
At the foot of the Campanile, this little jewel of polychrome marbles and bronzes is Sansovino’s Loggetta: a miniature triumphal arch, built between 1537 and 1549 as an open-air drawing room for the patricians on their way to the Doge’s Palace.
- The Columns of the Piazzetta San Marco
For centuries, anyone arriving in Venice from the sea entered the city passing here: the two columns of the Piazzetta were the monumental gateway of the Serenissima (the Republic of Venice), the threshold between the power of the Doge’s Palace and the learning of the Libreria (the Library).
- Libreria Sansoviniana
Facing the Doge’s Palace, closing off the Piazzetta, stretches what Palladio called ’perhaps the richest and most ornate building since the days of the ancients’: the Libreria Sansoviniana, the public library of the Serenissima (the Republic of Venice).
- Zecca di Venezia (the Mint)
That cube of stone closing off the Piazzetta towards the Bacino (St Mark’s basin) is not a fortress, though it looks very much like one: it is the Zecca, the strongbox of the Serenissima (the Republic of Venice).
- Molo di San Marco
It is the only waterfront in Venice called a molo (quay): the stretch of fondamenta (canalside walkway) in front of the Piazzetta, between the Ponte della Paglia and the Ponte della Zecca.
- Giardini Reali
Behind the Procuratie Nuove, a stone’s throw from the Piazzetta, there is a corner of Venice that seems impossible: a real garden, with avenues, groves and a long pergola.
- The Capitaneria di Porto (former Magistrato della Farina)
At the mouth of the Grand Canal, just beyond the Giardini Reali, stands a pale palace with an arched portico that seems made to be seen from the water.
- St Mark's Basilica
For nearly a thousand years this was not the cathedral of Venice: it was the chapel of the doge (the elected ruler of the Venetian Republic), the temple of the State.
- Doge's Palace
For almost a thousand years the fate of Venice was decided from this palace.
- Bridge of Sighs
The Bridge of Sighs looks like a little piece of postcard architecture, but it was born as a device of Venetian justice.
- Prigioni Nuove
Opposite the Doge’s Palace, beyond the rio (a small canal) crossed by the Bridge of Sighs, the Palazzo delle Prigioni is one of the first buildings in Europe put up expressly to serve as a prison: a severe, single-storey classical façade, with a portico and mighty rusticated blocks of Istrian stone, begun in 1563 by Rusconi, resumed by Antonio da Ponte in 1589 and completed by the Contino in 1614.