"Thank God I am here! It is the paradise of cities".
John Ruskin
The following is a brief guide to Venice, which, I hope, will help you to prepare for your visit to a city that is unlike any other.
For more information about the opening times of museums, visit: Venice
Note: If a monument or museum is highlighted in red, please click on it for a link to the official website.
The heart of Venice is the Piazza San Marco, which Napoleon is said to have described as "the finest drawing room in Europe". It is the only open space in the entire city to be called a piazza, for such spaces in Venice are known as a campi. The distinction may have arisen from the fact that the square in front of San Marco was paved long before any of the other squares in the city. 
The piazza has always been the focal point of the city, the place where people came together to celebrate the Venetian state in the form of grand ceremonies and colourful pageants and processions.
On a more mundane level, it was also where ordinary markets were held.
The ancient Basilica di San Marco, after which the square takes its name, dominates the entire eastern side of the piazza.
The Basilica di San Marco
The Basilica was originally built, between 1063 and 1073, to house the tomb of Saint Mark. (Venetian merchants had smuggled the body out of the city of Alexandria in the 9th century). It was later transformed during both the Gothic and Renaissance periods.
Its construction, rather like the city itself, is a mixture of Byzantine and Western styles. The church crouches rather than sits on the east side of St Mark's Square, looking, in the words of one writer, like a giant be-jewelled beetle.
Venice has always looked to the east as much as to the west and this is reflected in the sumptuous decoration of the interior. Set against a gilded background, the mosaics date back to the 12th and 13th century.
The Pala D'Oro
But the real jewel in the Basilica's crown is the perhaps the priceless Pala D'Oro.
Decorated with enamels and precious stones, it stands over the crypt which houses the body of St Mark.
It was originally made in Constantinople at the end of the 10th century, but restored and enlarged by the Venetians between 1105 and 1345. It contains 187 plaques and almost 2,000 gems, all arranged in a silver-gilt frame.
You can see, on the right, a detail of the altarpiece in the shape of St Michael, sword in hand.
The facade of the Basilica is pierced by five large portals and above the central doorway are copies of the four famous bronze horses. The original horses, which date back to the 4th century, are now displayed in the Basilica's Museum. They were plundered by the Venetians during the sacking of Constantinople, in 1204.
Centuries later the horses were again plundered, this time by the French following Napoleon's conquest of the city in 1799. This brought to an end the Venetian Empire, which had lasted a thousand years. Venice, however, was more fortunate than Constantinople, in that the horses were returned to St Mark's following the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.
On the corner of the Basilica nearest the Palazzo Ducale, can be found another spoil from the sacking of Constantinople. The early 4th century porphyry sculpture, known as the Tetrarchs, depicts, it is thought, the four men who were joint rulers of the Roman Empire in the year 300.
Torre dell' Orologio
The north side of the square is marked by the very ornate Torre Dell' Orologio or Clock Tower, which dates back to the end of the 15th century
The clock face bears the signs of the Zodiac and at the very top are the famous Moors, a pair of giant bronze jacks, who have been striking the hours for over five hundred years.
The Palazzo Ducale
"It is the central building of the world". (John Ruskin).
The nominal ruler of Venice was known as the Doge and the palace was both his official residence and the seat of government. It was also a symbol of Venetian power and glory. The Palazzo Ducale was originally built in the 12th century, but largely transformed from the end of the 13th until the 16th century.
Two sides of the Palazzo Ducale are made up of delicate filigrees of white Istrian stone and pink Verona marble. The capitals of the 36 squat columns on the north side were carved in the 14th and 15th centuries with figures telling stories.
There is a beautiful depiction of the Judgement of Solomon on the nearby corner of the Palazzo Ducale, which has been attributed to Jacopo della Quercia. 
The main entrance to the palace is through the Porta della Carta, which was built in the Flamboyant Gothic style in the middle of the 15th century. The entrance is surmounted by an image of the Lion of St Mark, before which Doge Foscari is kneeling.
The finest room in the palace is the Grand Council Chamber, which at 52m by 23m is also the largest.
In its size and the nature of its decoration, the Council Chamber is a manifestation of Venetian propaganda.
The side walls are adorned with paintings illustrating successful episodes of Venetian history, while the end wall, surmounting the Doge's throne, is decorated with a huge image of Paradise. Painted by Tintoretto between 1588 and 1594, it is one of the largest compositions in the world.
The Campanile
On the morning of July 14th, 1902, cracks started to appear in Venice's ancient brick bell tower. The cracks rapidly widened and suddenly the tower crashed to the ground. It had stood in the square for almost one thousand years, one of the great landmarks of the city. Suddenly it was nothing more than a large pile of rubble. By some miracle the only casualty was the porter's cat!
In the space of a single decade, it was rebuilt to its original design and height (325 feet) and re-opened in 1912, exactly one thousand years since it had first been erected.
The views from the top of the tower, particularly when the sky is clear, are magnificent.
The classical style was slow to come to Venice, but crouching at the base of the bell tower is one the earliest examples. It was introduced to the city by a Florentine, Jacopo Sansovino, who had arrived here in 1527. Ten years later he designed the Loggetta or small loggia as a meeting-place for the city's nobility.
The Loggetta was also a casualty of the collapse of the campanile, but it, too, was carefully rebuilt to its original design.
Libreria Sansoviniana
Sansovino also designed, in the classical style, the much larger building, which sits a few feet away from the Loggetta, in the direction of the water. The starkly contrasting styles of the Classical and Gothic face each other across the Piazzetta di San Marco. The building now houses a library and a museum, but when it was first commissioned it was intended to be the new seat of office of the procurators of San Marco. 
Sansovino completed the building until the 16th arcade, but it was later extended by Vincenzo Scamozzi, a Venetian architect, all the way to the waterfront.
The edge of the long piazzetta, where it meets the water, is marked by two granite columns. On one stands a winged lion, on the other Saint Theodore.
The lion, winged or otherwise, is displayed throughout the city, for It is the symbol of Mark the Evangelist, the patron saint of Venice. But St Mark hasn't always enjoyed this role; Venice's original patron was Saint Theodore. The Greek saint is now largely forgotten and I know of no depictions of him, apart from this very prominent sculpture complete with crocodile.
The body of water beyond the two columns is known as the Bacino di San Marco. From here you get a perfect view of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, which sits on a small island in the middle of the lagoon.
San Giorgio Maggiore
The church is the work of one of the greatest architects of the Renaissance, Andrea Palladio.
Since the the late 10th century, the island had been occupied by Benedictine monks. Palladio had just finished work on a new refectory for the order when, in 1565, he received the commission to build the church.
The architect carefully designed the facade so that it would be clearly visible from a distance, making it the perfect counterpart to the buildings on the other side of the basin.
Dogana da Mar
The entrance to the Grand Canal is marked by the Dogana da Mar, the maritime customs office, which was built at the end of the 17th century. Venice was once one of Europe's busiest ports and ships from all over the world would dock here to be unloaded and obtain custom's clearance.
The top of the Dogana was once surmounted by a watchtower to guard against foreign invasion.
This has been replaced by a golden globe, held aloft by two atlases. Perched on the globe is the goddess Fortuna. With a steering oar in one hand and a sail in the other, she acts as both a weather vane and as a symbol of the unpredictability of fate.
The open area in front of the Doge's Palace is known as the Molo. At the eastern end is the Ponte della Paglia (Bridge of Straw), which is generally crowded with people taking photographs. The focus of their interest is another bridge, which can best seen from this spot.
The Ponte dei Sospiri
There are two bridges in Venice which most people have heard of, the Rialto, which I describe in Part Two, and the Ponte dei Sospiri or Bridge of Sighs, which linked the Palazzo Ducale to the adjacent prisons.
The rooms on the bottom floor were known as the pozzi or wells on account of their dampness, while the rooms under the roof were known as the piombi or leads.
The bridge was built in the 17th century and its name derives from the lamentations of the prisoners who caught their final glimpse of sky from it before being incarcerated in their often windowless cells.
It was from this prison that Giacomo Casanova made his famous escape in 1756. He had been denounced as a magician and sentenced to five years imprisonment.
There is a good view from the Ponte della Paglia of the corner of the east end of the Palazzo Ducale, which is decorated with a beautiful carving (c.1344) depicting the drunkenness of Noah.
Part Two
