Doge's Palace, Venice

The Doge's Palace (Italian: Palazzo Ducale) is a gothic palace, and one of the main landmarks of the city of Venice, northern Italy. The palace was the residence of the Doge of Venice, the supreme authority of the Republic of Venice, opening as a museum in 1923. Today it is one of the 11 museums of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia system.

The oldest part of the palace is the façade overlooking the lagoon, the corners of which are decorated with 14th century sculptures by Filippo Calendario and various Lombard artists such as Raverti and Antonio Bregno. The ground floor arcade and the loggia above are decorated with 14th and 15th century capitals, some of which were replaced with copies during the 19th century.

In 1438-1442, Giovanni and Bartolomeo Bon built and adorned the Porta della Carta, which served as the cerimonial entrance to the building. The name of the gateway probably derives either from the fact that this was the area where public scribes set up their desks, or from the nearby location of the cartabum, the archives of state documents. Flanked by Gothic pinnacles, with two figures of the Cardinal Virtues per side, the gateway is crowned by a bust of St. Mark over which rises a statue of Justice with her traditional symbols of sword and scales. In the space above the cornice, there is a sculptural portrait of the Doge Francesco Foscari kneeling before the St. Mark's Lion. This is, however, a 19th century work by Luigi Ferrrari, created to replace the original destroyed in 1797.

Nowadays, the public entrance to the Doge's Palace is via the Porta del Frumento, in the waterfront side of the building. In 2010 it was visited by 1.358.186 people.

Fondaco dei Turchi

The Fondaco dei Turchi (Venetian: Fontego dei Turchi "The Turks' Inn") is a Veneto-Byzantine style palazzo on the Grand Canal of Venice, northeast Italy.

The palace was constructed in the first half of the 13th century by Giacomo Palmier, an exile from Pesaro. The Venetian Republic purchased it in 1381 for Niccolò II d'Este, the Marquess of Ferrara. During its early history, the palazzo also served as a residence to many visiting dignitaries.

The building was in a very bad state by the mid-19th century, and was completely restored between 1860 and 1880. Some innovations have been added to the original Veneto-Byzantine design: for example, there were originally no towers on either side.

From 1890 to 1923, the area was home the Museo Correr collection, which was moved to the Procuratie Nuove and Ala Napoleonica museums, at the Piazza San Marco, after 1923. Today, the area houses the Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia (Natural History Museum of Venice), with historical collections of flora and fauna, fossils, and an aquarium.

Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark

The Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark (officially known in Italian as the Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco and 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 Byzantine architecture. It 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, gilded Byzantine 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 temporary building in the Doge's Palace, constructed in 828, when Venetian merchants stole the supposed relics of Mark the Evangelist from Alexandria. This was replaced by a new church on its present site in 832; from the same century dates the first St Mark's Campanile (bell tower). The new church was burned in a rebellion in 976, rebuilt in 978 and again to form the basis of the present basilica since 1063. The basilica was consecrated in 1094, the same year in which the body of Saint Mark was supposedly rediscovered in a pillar by Vitale Faliero, doge at the time. The building also incorporates a low tower (now housing St Mark’s Treasure), believed by some to have been part of the original Doge's Palace. Within the first half of the 13th century the narthex and the new façade were constructed, most of the mosaics were completed and the domes were covered with higher wooden, lead-covered domes in order to blend in with the Gothic architecture of the redesigned Doge's Palace.

In an attempt to stabilise the Roman Empire after the crisis of the third century, the Emperor Diocletian imposed a new Imperial office structure: a four co-emperor ruling plan called The Tetrarchy. This porphyry statue represents the inter-dependence of the four rulers. It was taken from Constantinople, during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and set into the south-west corner of the basilica (the above mentioned low tower) at the level of the Piazza San Marco. The missing foot of one of the figures was discovered in Istanbul (near the Bodrum Mosque) in the 1960s, where it is still on display.