St Mark's Basilica

St Mark's is not a cathedral that grew out of a bishop's church; it was the private chapel of the Doge and the state sanctuary of the Venetian Republic, and it became the city's cathedral only in 1807. It was built to house the body of St Mark, which, according to medieval chronicles, two Venetian merchants took from Alexandria in 828. The present church, the third on the site, was begun around 1063 and dedicated in 1094. Its model was the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, a domed cross-shaped church, adapted to the cramped site and to the ceremonies of the Venetian state. Over the following centuries the brick shell was covered with marble, columns and sculpture, much of it spoils from Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade of 1204.

The most famous spoils are the four gilded bronze horses from the Hippodrome of Constantinople, the only surviving team of horses from classical antiquity. The originals have been kept inside since 1974, with copies on the balcony above the central portal. On the south side, embedded in the corner of the treasury, stands the porphyry group of the Four Tetrarchs, another trophy of 1204.

Inside, the domes, vaults and upper walls are covered with gold-ground mosaics made over about eight centuries, some purely Byzantine, others designed from drawings by Titian, Tintoretto, Paolo Uccello and other Renaissance painters. In the dim light the gold seems to glow on its own. Behind the high altar, where St Mark's relics have rested since 1835, is the Pala d'Oro, a golden altarpiece ordered from Constantinople in 1102 and installed in 1105. Around the chancel, bronze reliefs tell the life and miracles of St Mark, and the ciborium over the altar rests on four carved columns whose age is still debated, with dates proposed from 6th-century Byzantium to 13th-century Venice.

Getting there

The basilica stands at the eastern end of Piazza San Marco in Venice, next to the Doge's Palace, about 0.6 km from the city's centre. Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE) is 7.9 km away across the lagoon; the Alilaguna express Gold Line water bus runs to Piazza San Marco, and ATVO express buses reach Piazzale Roma in 20 to 25 minutes, from where vaporetti continue down the Grand Canal.