Best Venice Views From St Marks Bell Tower

Overlooking Italy’s City of Water from the Campanile di San Marco

Aug 25, 2009

Few sights in Europe can compare in sheer romance to looking across the domes and rooftops of Venice as the moon rises over the Adriatic, bathing Venice in its glow.

The best vantage point – and the only one with a view of both the sea and the city of Venice, is the Campanile di San Marco– the bell tower of St. Mark's Basilica. While St. Mark’s – the piazza, the church and the tower – are among the most familiar images in all Italy, ranking right up there with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the view from the Campanile is less photographed, so less familiar.

History of St. Mark’s Bell Tower

The 323-foot free-standing tower faces the church, its clean geometrical shape and brick facing contrasting nicely with the basilica’s highly decorated façade. Because its base was so plain, in the early 1500s the Mannerist sculptor Jacopo Sansovino was commissioned to design a loggia that would make its severe lines more compatible with the surrounding buildings. Completed in 1540, the small marble-faced Loggetta is decorated with bronze, statuary and relief-carved panels of red marble from the quarries north of Verona.

At the very top of the spire is a 10-foot golden statue of the archangel Gabriel, whose wings catch the wind and spin him around as a giant weathervane. Venetians watch to see if he faces the basilica, which often signals the agua alta – high tides that cover the streets.

Campanile San Marco Collapses

Although today’s campanile looks just as it did after its restoration in the 1500s, it is a complete reconstruction. In 1902, a large crack began moving up the side of the tower and it collapsed suddenly one July morning in 1902. Pictures of the resulting pile of rubble exist, but the popular one showing it in the process of falling was later proved a fake (and before PhotoShop, too). It was decided to rebuild it, “where it was and what it was” – a phrase that rang again after fire destroyed La Fenice, Venice’s opera house, in 1996.

Famous Visitors to St. Mark’s Tower

In 1609, Galileo demonstrated his telescope to the Doge from the belfry, and the Doge was so impressed that it resulted in Galileo’s appointment to the faculty at Padua. The five bells in the tower each had its own sound and purpose, which ranged from signaling the start and end of the working day to announcing executions. Although visitors to the belfry since 1962 have been taken there by an elevator, earlier ones climbed a ramp – or rode up in on horseback, as Emperor Frederick III of the Holy Roman Empire, is reputed to have done in 1452.

The View from the Top

Venice spreads out below, by day in a paisley pattern of red rooftops and canals and by night in a glow of streetlights illuminating Piazza San Marco below and smaller campos all over the city. The trick to seeing it at night is to go as late as possible, remembering that the last entrance is usually an hour before closing. Catching it by the rising moon is even trickier, but well worth planning a trip around – and hoping for a clear evening in order to see it make a path of moonbeams across the water to the gondolas bobbing below the Doge’s Palace. By day or night the view is well worth the 8 € admission fee.

St Mark’s Bell Tower Open Hours

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