Campanile di San Marco

The Campanile di San Marco is the bell tower of St Mark's Basilica, standing alone in St Mark's Square. At 98.5 metres, it is the tallest structure in Venice. The Grand Canal flows close by the square. One glimpse of the tower and you know which city you are in.

It started out as a watchtower, built to spot incoming ships and warn the city. Venice raised it against Magyar raids in the late ninth century, alongside an iron chain that could block the Grand Canal. Work began in the early tenth century and continued in stages under successive doges, the rulers of Venice. Builders drove alder piles into the soft clay and capped them with oak planks and stone. A first belfry went up in the twelfth century, crowned by a wooden spire sheathed in copper. In the fourteenth century the city covered it in gold leaf, a beacon for sailors out on the Adriatic. An earthquake in 1511 and repeated fires wrecked the top. The tower reached its full height in 1514, when the belfry and spire went up in stone to Giorgio Spavento's Renaissance design. It collapsed in 1902, and the reconstruction you see today was finished in 1912.

The square brick shaft is twelve metres wide on each side and fifty metres tall. Its bells once marked the start and end of the workday, called people to government meetings and announced public executions. Higher up, an attic carries sculptures carved in Istrian stone. The lion of St Mark looks out on two sides, with Venice as Justice on the other two. Crowning it all, a gilded copper archangel Gabriel serves as a weather vane. The figure always turns to face the wind. Placed there in 1513, it was meant to recall the legend that Venice was founded on the feast of the Annunciation.