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Places to see in ( Venice - Italy ) Basilica di San Marco. placestoseee. The Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark, commonly known as Saint Mark's Basilica, is the cathedral church of the Roman …More
Places to see in ( Venice - Italy ) Basilica di San Marco.

placestoseee. The Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark, commonly known as Saint Mark's Basilica, is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice, northern Italy. It is the most famous of the city's churches and one of the best known examples of Italo-Byzantine architecture.

Basilica di San Marco lies at the eastern end of the Piazza San Marco, adjacent and connected to the Doge's Palace. Originally it was the chapel of the Doge, and has only been the city's cathedral since 1807, when it became the seat of the Patriarch of Venice, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice, formerly at San Pietro di Castello.

For its opulent design, gold ground mosaics, and its status as a symbol of Venetian wealth and power, from the 11th century on the building has been known by the nickname Chiesa d'Oro (Church of gold).

The first St Mark's was a building next to the Doge's Palace, ordered by the doge in 828, when Venetian merchants stole the supposed relics of Mark the Evangelist from Alexandria, and completed by 832; from the same century dates the first St Mark's Campanile (bell tower). The church was burned in a rebellion in 976, when the populace locked Pietro IV Candiano inside to kill him, and restored or rebuilt in 978. Nothing certain is known of the form of these early churches.

The Horses of Saint Mark were installed on the balcony above the portal of the basilica in about 1254. They date to Classical Antiquity, though their date remains a matter of debate, and presumably were originally the team pulling a quadriga chariot, probably containing an emperor.

The spacious interior of the building with its multiple choir lofts was the inspiration for the development of a Venetian polychoral style among the composers appointed maestro di cappella at the choir of St Mark's. The style was first developed by a foreigner, Adrian Willaert, and was continued by Italian organists and composers: Andrea Gabrieli, his nephew Giovanni Gabrieli, and Claudio Monteverdi. Their music took advantage of the spacious architecture and led to the development of polychoral and antiphonal textures. An example of this technique is found in In Ecclesiis by Giovanni Gabrieli.