St Mark's Square in Venice (Piazza San Marco)

Venice. Saint Mark's Square is trapezoidal, and the Procuratie vecchie and Procuratie Nuove run along the two extensive sides. They are known as old ('vecchie') and new ('nuove') on the basis of the age of the buildings over the arcades of the ground-level porticoes. The Procuratie Vecchie runs along the north side of the square from the Clocktower and have kept their Reinassance features. They are followed by Ala Napoleonica ('Napoleonic Wing'). This was built in 1810 by the architect Giuseppe Soli on the site of the demolished San Geminiano church, which was built by Sansovino.

The Procuratie Nuove runs along the west side of the square and includes the Libreria di San Marco, which was designed by Jacopo Sansovino at the request of the Venetian Republic to house the codicils donated to it by Cardinal Bessarione. The clocktower is at the start of the Merceria, the road that leads from Saint Mark's Square to the Campo di San Barolomeo.
The name 'Merceria' refers to the many shops on both sides of it. It still today the place to buy the finest local and international products. Piazza San Marco is as unique as its name: indeed it is the only “Piazza” in Venice as the others are campi. In those far off days when the Veneti people chose this land as the seat of their Government, at the beginning of the 9th century, and built their Ducal castle and later their Basilica, the piazza was much smaller, squeezed more or less between the facade of the church and a canal, now filled in, called the rio Batario. In time, about the end of the 12th century, the church of St. Mark’s was enlarged, the Ducal Palace was turned into a "palacio" and the political and commercial power of Venice had become much stronger and more stable.

Thus little by little the Piazza came to be what it was when Gentile Bellini drew it in his famous painting of the Procession of the Cross, at the end of the 15th century. The Piazza put in order in this way, with herring-bone brick pavement until 1264, later with the modern type of Euganean trachyte with white stripes, which was used for the first time in 1723, from a design by Andrea Tirali, it becomes the most suitable place for fetes, cavalcades and ceremonies.