St. Mark's Basilica

St. Mark's Basilica (Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco) stands on Piazza San Marco in Venice, in Italy's Veneto region, next to the Doge's Palace. According to tradition, Venetian merchants smuggled the body of St. Mark from Alexandria to Venice in 828, and the first church was built to hold it. That building burned in 976; the present basilica was largely rebuilt from 1063 under Doge Domenico Contarini and consecrated in 1094. Its plan is a Greek cross topped by five domes, modelled on the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, with later Gothic pinnacles and ogee arches added to the facade in the 14th and 15th centuries. The interior is covered by roughly 8,000 square metres of gold-ground mosaics created between the 11th and 13th centuries and restored many times since; scenes include the Pentecost dome, the Ascension dome and the Genesis cycle in the atrium. The floor is a rolling pavement of marble and porphyry in geometric patterns, deformed by centuries of subsidence. The Pala d'Oro, a gold and enamel altarpiece set with thousands of gems, sits behind the high altar and was assembled in stages from the 10th to the 14th century. The Treasury holds Byzantine chalices and reliquaries, many taken in the Fourth Crusade sack of Constantinople in 1204, and the upstairs museum displays the gilded bronze Horses of St. Mark, with replicas on the loggia facade. The basilica was the doge's chapel until 1807, when it became the city's cathedral. Its condition is monitored closely because of salt damage, acqua alta flooding, notably in November 2019, and settling foundations, and it is under continuous conservation by the Procuratoria di San Marco. Modest dress is required: shoulders and knees covered, and large bags must be left at the nearby bag deposit on Ateneo San Basso.