San Marco Travel Guide

Enclosed by the lower loop of the Canal Grande, the sestiere of San Marco - a rectangle smaller than 1000m by 500m - has been the nucleus of Venice from the start of the city's existence. When its founders decamped from the coastal town of Malamocco to settle on the safer islands of the inner lagoon, the area now known as the Piazza San Marco was where the first rulers built their citadel - the Palazzo Ducale - and it was here that they established their most important church - the Basilica di San Marco . Over the succeeding centuries the Basilica evolved into the most ostentatiously rich church in Christendom, and the Palazzo Ducale grew to accommodate and celebrate a system of government that endured for longer than any other republican regime in Europe. Meanwhile, the setting for these two great edifices developed into a public space so dignified that no other square in the city was thought fit to bear the name "piazza"- all other Venetian squares are campi or campielli.

Nowadays the Piazza is what keeps the city solvent. Fifty percent of Venice's visitors make a beeline for this spot, spend a few hours and a few thousand lire here, then head for home without staying for even one night. For those who do hang around, San Marco has multitudinous ways of easing the cash from the pockets: the plushest hotels are concentrated in this sestiere; the most elegant and exorbitant cafés spill out onto the pavement from the Piazza's arcades; the most extravagantly priced seafood is served in this area's restaurants; and the swankiest shops in Venice line the Piazza and the streets radiating from it - interspersed with dozens of hugely profitable souvenir suppliers.

And yet, small though this sestiere is, it harbours plenty of refuges from the assaults of commerce. Even within the Piazza you can escape the crush, as the Museo Correr is rarely crowded and the excellent archeological museum barely sees a soul. The Renaissance church of San Salvador - only a few minutes' walk from the Piazza - and the Gothic Santo Stefano are both magnificent and comparatively neglected buildings, while San Moisè, Santa Maria Zobenigo and the Scala del Bovolo rank among the city's most engaging oddities. On the fringes of the sestiere you'll find two of Venice's major exhibition spaces: the immense Palazzo Grassi , where the city's prestige art shows are held, and the Museo Fortuny , which as well as staging special events also contains a permanent collection of work by the designer Mariano Fortuny.