Piazza San Marco
The grand theatrical heart of Venice, built to impress for a thousand years.
Piazza San Marco is the main public square of Venice and one of the most famous public spaces in the world. Napoleon reportedly called it 'the drawing room of Europe,' and the description still holds — it's a vast, elegant rectangle framed by porticoed buildings on three sides and anchored at the far end by the extraordinary Basilica di San Marco, whose Byzantine domes and golden mosaics have been drawing visitors since the 11th century. The free-standing Campanile — the tall brick bell tower that collapsed in 1902 and was faithfully rebuilt — stands nearly 99 metres tall and dominates the skyline. This is where Venice puts on its best face.
The piazza itself is an experience even before you set foot in any of its monuments. You walk through the Procuratie Vecchie and Procuratie Nuove colonnades, duck into the ornate Caffè Florian (the oldest café in Italy, operating since 1720), and watch pigeons and tourists mill about in roughly equal numbers. The Doge's Palace on the southern edge — a spectacular Gothic-meets-Byzantine building that served as the seat of Venetian power for centuries — is arguably the single most rewarding interior you can visit in Venice. The Museo Correr, which fills the Napoleonic wing and both Procuratie buildings, is often overlooked despite being excellent. At the far end, the lagoon opens up at the Bacino, where the view back toward the square from the water is unforgettable.
Come early — before 8am if you can manage it — and the square is almost eerily quiet, the light off the stone extraordinary, and the whole thing genuinely yours. By mid-morning the tour groups arrive in force and it becomes a different place entirely. Skip the overpriced Florian coffee for its atmosphere but don't skip the interior, which is one of the most beautifully preserved 18th-century café rooms anywhere. Acqua alta — the high water flooding that periodically inundates the square — is most common from October to January and has its own strange, melancholy beauty, but bring waterproof boots if you're visiting in that window.