Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco (St Mark’s Cathedral) in the Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square) in central Venice, Italy.
St Mark’s cathedral was built in the ninth century, to house St Mark’s remains which had been smuggled out of Turkey by some merchants. Following a fire in 932 which destroyed the original building, it was rebuilt in its present multi-cultural form, incorportating Byzantine domes, a Greek cross layout and walls clad in marble from Syria, Egypt and Palestine. At that time, St Mark’s was the private chapel of the Doge (senior elected official) of Venice.
Ten years after the end of the Republic in 1797, St Mark’s became Venice’s official Cathedral.
In Venice it’s impossible to build huge structures: the terrain is frail, so you have to carefully stick to small, light and flexible buildings. But the Venetians had to find a way to astonish their guests: so they optimized some very clever tricks to cheat the eye and give everyone the impression that the buildings are huge and imposing.
In St. Mark’s Basilica there is a great example of this: the five big domes that give the building its distinctive shape are just a superstructure made of wood cover with a thin layer of lead. They are actually completely empty: the brick built domes with the mosaics that you see inside the church are much lower.
Walks of Italy
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