On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
randy khan
St. Mark’s Square is the spiritual center of Venetian life. It’s enormous and, of course, pedestrian-only. One side is dominated by St. Mark’s Basilica, but two of the other sides are largely restaurants. There are several that have extensive outdoor seating – maybe in the range of a couple hundred seats each – and you can sit there and watch the goings-on in the square. There’s a lot to watch.
Here’s a wide view of the square, with the church at the back. This looks pretty empty, but there still are a lot of people there.
There were street vendors all over St. Mark’s Square. They’re split about evenly between selling souvenirs, like this one, and fake designer goods. The striped shirts are supposed to be like the ones gondoliers wear.
A lot of the time, there are more pigeons than people in the square, and they are practically tame or at least as close to tame as feral pigeons can be. Here’s an example – if you hold out your hand, pigeons will land on it.
Sitting in your wicker café chair gives you the chance to see things like this. Seemingly out of nowhere came a procession of people dressed in 17th century (I think) clothes, walking from the church side of the square to the other end.
The rest of the photos are of the basilica. It actually was built as a chapel(!) for the doge and dates back to the 11
century C.E., but let’s say it’s been enhanced significantly since then. Probably most importantly, the domes were raised to their current height in the 13th century. This photo is of the main entrance. The winged lion is a symbol of St. Mark.
Our tour was in the evening, when the basilica was closed for the day. We went inside and it was pretty dark. Then they turned on the lights so we could see everything. It was pretty dramatic. This shot is looking upward into one of the domes. The scenes are all from Genesis – around the outer edge you see the story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit.
This is the Pala D’Oro, which is behind the main altar. There are about 250 enamel portraits on gold, imported from Byzantium in the 11th and 12th centuries. These apparently were purchased, but a lot of the relics in the basilica were taken during the Crusades. Among them were the bones of St. Mark, which basically were stolen from a cemetery. (As usual for such things, nobody really knows if they were the right bones.) At one point the bones disappeared, and were miraculously found during a renovation project in the middle of a big column. (Hey, I’m just reporting.)
A view along the transept. The whole interior is gold. It’s really something.
BlueNC
The marble columns on the front of the basilica? They don’t match. That’s because they were war spoils…basically a big F you from the Venetians to the rest of the world.
The horses up above that? From the sack of Constantinople in (I had to look it up) 1204. OK, technically, those are the replicas…the originals are inside that window to protect them from the weather.
Venice is a marvel.
Sandia Blanca
(The picture with the Pala d’Oro caption is of the square–perhaps there’s another photo floating around somewhere?)
We were in Venice in June 2019, when it was very hot and our feet were very tired, so we passed on standing in the long line to see the interior of the basilica. Thank you for sharing some of the beauty with us.
We hope to go back to Venice another time (in the off-season)–it is a magical city.
JanieM
@Sandia Blanca:
I did the same with St. Paul’s in London in May 2019 and regretted it afterwards. Hopefully there will be a next time.
*****
These are great pics yet again — the various churchs you’ve shown are amazing both inside and out.
The Fat Kate Middleton
We traveled a great deal once we reached 45 or so (and when our son started working for various airlines) – and we came to love Venice more than any city. (And it helped that I studied Italian in college.)
StringOnAStick
I spent two months in Italy in 1996 taking a class, and we did a long weekend to Venice; thanks for showing me more of the city than a group of innocents without a good guidebook managed to see! It was spring and not crowded at all, the latter mostly because it was a long time ago. I still have dreams from that trip and how enjoyable Italy was.
Benw
We took a family trip to Venice in summer 2017. We got to our room late in the day so we decided to walk around and look for dinner. We stumbled into St. Mark’s in the middle of the night while they were having some kind of light show/competition. My kids were dazzled!
Thanks for sharing your pics!
Wag
We were in Venice in the fall, and it was glorious. The food, especially the squid ink pasta, was delicious, and the architecture sublime. One of my favorite spots was the Venice branch of the Guggenheim museum. A beautiful collection of modern art in an ancient city.
The building that our hotel was in dated to the 13th century.
randy khan
@Sandia Blanca:
I don’t know what happened there. (Well, I suspect I do know, which is that I uploaded the wrong photo.)
Here’s a link to a Wikipedia image: Now you can see it.
Pharniel
These photos help recapture the “ahh, Venice” floaty feeling of being there.
I hope to go back once things, y’know, settle. Just a lovely place.
You did excellent work with the funky light inside the churches.
scribbler
@randy khan: I’ve enjoyed all of your pictures of Venice-thank you!
I love, love, love Venice. I can’t really explain why. I have been there twice and hope to go back as soon as I am able, post pandemic.
RaflW
I would just be so happy to get to Italy again! We have some very dear friends who live on the outskirts of Florence. The last two times we’ve seen them has been in Florida, which ain’t all that. And even that, we last saw them in the spring of 2019.
I’m flabbergasted to think that the last time we saw them over there was 2016. We vent to Puerto Ercole on the Italian coast, NW of Rome. It was a nice break, basically no Americans or other English speakers in the area. Very helpful to have a bi-national couple as your friends in that case! The beaches were nice, and very low-key. It was insanely hot, though. Which is good for a beach vacation, but a/c can be a thing of limited availability. We managed to coax enough for our bedroom, and our Florence friends just live with out. (Not my forte.)
WaterGirl
@randy khan: I can add or replace an image, or replace the caption. Just let me know.
randy khan
@WaterGirl: The correct image will be on its way in a bit.
JustRuss
Did some traveling in Italy in the 80s. Venice wasn’t my favorite but I did enjoy it, so much to see there, and just wandering around the streets was pretty fun.
randy khan
@Sandia Blanca:
Thanks to WaterGirl for fixing my mistake, so now we have the right image.