St. Mark’s Basilica: A Photo Tour

TIME : 2016/2/25 15:23:56

My favorite church on the planet – at least of the ones I’ve visited so far – is St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. It’s famous for its onion domes and glittering gold mosaic ceilings, and the distinctive building has served as the backdrop for paintings and photographs for hundreds of years, so I know I’m not the only one who’s enamored of this church.

I hope you’ll enjoy this photo tour of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. I know I will!

>> Learn more about visiting St. Mark’s Basilica for your Venice trip!

St. Mark's Basilica stands out for its distinctive onion domes, but it's particularly noted for its mosaics.

The square in front of St. Mark's is called (naturally) St. Mark's Square - which Napoleon called "Europe's finest drawing room."

St. Mark's Square was long a gathering place for enormous numbers of pigeons, along with vendors selling pigeon food to tourists. More recently, the city has been trying to keep pigeon numbers down in the square, because of the damage the birds do to the historic buildings.

To get the best view overlooking the domes of St. Mark's, you've got to get to the top of the adjacent Campanile (bell tower).

Despite their outer beauty, it's hard to appreciate from the outside just how ornately decorated the interior of these domes is.

The mosaic show begins before you even enter the church - this mosaic over one of the doors depicts the smuggling of St. Mark's body to Venice from Egypt.

This mosaic, also over one of the entry doors, shows an older version of the church (very similar to what we see today) which burned in the 10th century. Note the four golden horses on the balcony.

These are two of the original bronze horses that once adorned the front of the Basilica - replicas overlook the piazza now, and the original four horses are inside the museum.

St. Mark's interior is, in a word, stunning.

While the soaring domed ceiling gets all the eyeballs, don't forget to look at the walls and ceilings elsewhere in the church, too - there are mosaics everywhere.

Indeed, while the walls and ceilings are most often talked about because of their golden brilliance, the floors of the entire Basilica are covered in mosaics (not gold) as well. Not only that, they undulate because of the irregular sinking of the islands.

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photos used in the slideshow by: tiseb, Sue Elias, Mohan S, Gruenemann, christine zenino, alexandralee, alag_pl, Christopher Macsurak, Tango7174, Tetraktys, Andrew and Annemarie

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St. Mark’s Basilica: A Photo Tour

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