Piazza San Marco
— — the room the city keeps for the world.
Not only on a wall.
“The only square in Venice the locals call a piazza; the rest are campi. On three sides it is enclosed by the long arcades of the Procuratie, on the fourth by the five domes of the Basilica San Marco and the pink-and-white face of the Doge's Palace. The Campanile stands a little apart, the way a bell tower should. The pigeons have thinned in recent years. Acqua alta still floods the pavement on the high autumn tides, and the orchestras at Florian still play in the afternoon, and the light off the lagoon still arrives almost level.
Piazza San Marco, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Piazza San Marco sits at the head of the Grand Canal where it meets the Venetian Lagoon, in the sestiere of San Marco. The square is shaped like a long trapezoid, about 180 metres long and 70 metres wide at its broadest point, and is the lowest-lying open space in Venice — only about a metre above mean sea level. It is the only square in the city named piazza; all others are campi. The Basilica San Marco closes the east end, the Doge's Palace stands just south of it, and the three sides of the Procuratie enclose the rest. Venice and its lagoon were inscribed by UNESCO in 1987.
Because Piazza San Marco sits roughly a metre above mean sea level, it is the first place in Venice to flood when an acqua alta tide pushes in from the Adriatic. High waters of 80 cm above datum cover the lowest corner of the pavement; tides above 110 cm reach the basilica steps. Records kept since 1872 show the ten worst events on file, including November 1966 (194 cm) and November 2019 (187 cm). Since 2020 the MOSE barriers at the lagoon inlets have been raised on the largest tides, and the basilica has its own internal flood barrier protecting the narthex mosaics.
The piazza is open day and night and free to walk. The Basilica San Marco is free to enter, though admission is charged for the Pala d'Oro, the treasury, and the upstairs gallery from which the four bronze horses are best seen; timed tickets are required in the high season. Doge's Palace, the Correr Museum, and the Campanile each charge separately. Caffè Florian, on the south side under the Procuratie Nuove, has been serving since 1720 and is the oldest continuously operating coffee house in the world. Early morning and late evening are the quiet hours; midsummer days in the square run hot and crowded.