After dinner on our first night in Venice, Victoria and I decided to stroll on to St. Mark’s Square, or Piazza San Marco as it’s known locally. For a description of the Square and its buildings, I’ll quote Wikipedia: “The Square is dominated at its eastern end by the great church of St Mark.
“The church is described in the article St Mark’s Basilica, but there are aspects of it which are so much a part of the Piazza that they must be mentioned here, including the whole of the west facade with its great arches and marble decoration, the Romanesque carvings round the central doorway and, above all, the four horses (see photos above) which preside over the whole piazza and are such potent symbols of the pride and power of Venice that the Genoese in 1379 said that there could be no peace between the two cities until these horses had been bridled; four hundred years later, Napoleon, after he had conquered Venice, had them taken down and shipped to Paris.”
Note: After the Battle of Waterloo, during the Allied Occupation of Paris, the Duke of Wellington ordered that the horses be returned to the Basilica. A Captain Dumaresq, who had fought at the Battle of Waterloo and was with the Allied Forces in Paris, was selected by the Emperor of Austria to take the horses down from the Arc de Triomphe and accompany them on their return to their original place at St Mark’s. The horses remained in place over St Mark’s until the early 1980s, when the ongoing damage from growing air pollution forced their replacement with exact copies. Since then, the originals have been on display just inside the Basilica.
” . . . standing free in the Piazza, is the Campanile of St Mark’s church (last restored in 1514), rebuilt in 1912 ‘ com’era, dov’era ‘ (as it was, where it was) after the collapse of the former campanile on 14 July 1902.”
Another landmark in the Piazza is Florian’s, or Caffè Florian, which claims to be the worlds oldest coffee house, since 1720. In actuality, the first coffeehouse in London was opened in 1652 in St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, by a Pasqua Rosée. Never mind, Florian’s can still claim it’s famous patrons over the centuries, including Casanova and Napoleon, Lord Byron, Wagner, Dickens and Henry Joyce. From Florian’s website: “While the finest wines and coffees from the Orient, Malaysia, Cyprus and Greece were being served inside, history was unfolding outside. Its windows witnessed the splendour and fall of the Serenissima Republic of Venice and the secret conspiracies against French and then Austrian rule; later, its elegant rooms were used to treat the wounded during the 1848 uprising. Right from the beginning, Caffè Florian has had a glittering clientele, including Goldoni, Giuseppe Parini, Silvio Pellico and many others.”
Naturally, Vicky and I couldn’t pass Florian’s without having a drink and listening to the band.
I ordered an amaretto and Vicky had a glass of prosecco. Once again, Venetian hospitality was on display in the form of the unexpected olives, biscotti and cookies that accompanied our drinks.
We sat companionably and enjoyed our drinks, the warm, starlit night and the music for quite a while. Again, very civilized. In fact, we liked Florian’s so well that we went back the next night, when my daughter Brooke arrived to join us in Venice. She seemed to enjoy it, too. If it was good enough for Lord Byron . . . .
You can listen to the band in this video I took on the night –