What to expect
St. Mark's Basilica is covered in roughly 8,000 square metres of gold-ground mosaic — a Byzantine church built in the ninth century to house the body of an evangelist, decorated for eight hundred years afterwards with whatever Venice brought home from the sea. In one hour, a licensed guide reads the ceiling for you: the Pentecost dome, the Ascension, the Genesis cupola with its week of creation. Your timed Skip-the-Line entry is booked, so you walk past the free-admission queue in the square. Add the Pala d'Oro, a Byzantine altarpiece set with nearly 2,000 gems, or the Loggia dei Cavalli, where the four bronze horses looted from Constantinople stand above St. Mark's Square.
