Basilica di San Marco a Venezia

Posted by Kaushal (Groningen, Netherlands) on 10 June 2007 in Architecture and Portfolio.

St. Mark's Basilica, the cathedral of Venice and one of the most famous and crowded (not only by humans but an equal no. of pigeons) places in Venice.
The cathedral is a remarkable piece of architechture belonging to the Byzantine era with a seething mass of domes and arches. The church was modelled on Constantinople's Church of the Twelve Apostles and consecrated in 1094. It was built over several centuries, frequently transformed and enriched with precious treasures, often from the Far East.
The story goes that Mark, one the four Evangelists together with Luke, Mathew and John, was given the task of writing his Gospel by Peter himself and did so in Rome. The Venetians chose him as their patron saint because of his ties with Rome thus declaring their independence of the Byzantine Church.

Venetian merchants, along the Eastern routes, often stopped at Alexandria to pray on the saint's tomb. And it was in 828 A.D. that two Venetian merchants stole his remains and brought them back to Venice by ship, after hiding them in a chest full of vegetables and pork to avoid strict Muslim control. When the saint's body reached Venice it was welcomed in triumph and the Doge had a new church built as his tomb.
I think the best time to see this beauty is to go there very early in the morning when there are hardly any people.[try taking the first vaporetto (boat) at around 5 a.m.]..also worth visiting it at night when the lights come on.
I will probably post more images of this grand structure.

Thanks for your visits and comments!

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