St. Mark’s Basilica

The Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark 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. Originally it was the chapel of the Doge, and has been the city’s cathedral only 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. The basic structure of the church dates from roughly 1060 to 1100. The famous main facade has an ornamented roofline that is mostly Gothic, and the gold ground mosaics that now cover almost all the upper areas of the interior took centuries to complete. 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 “Church of gold”.