Piazza San Marco (by night)
The wide piazza gleams under the evening sky. Pigeons flutter like cinders over the pavement. Archways repeat as endlessly as a delicate madness, or memory, the many-columned, round-topped tiers of the Procuratie Vecchie balanced by the Neo-Classical portals of the Procuratie Nuove. At the small end of the piazza the Napoleonic Wing, and facing it, the focal point, the scalloped, pointed domes of the Basilica of San Marco, the Campanile, and a glimpse of the oriental delicacy of the Doge's Palace beyond. Lights spill from under the archways and cast fantastical shadows in the deep, ornamented recesses of the Basilica. Shadowy figures flit and voices echo, their directions seeming to change with bewildering swiftness.
Campanile San Marco is here.
Exits: