Santa Maria Formosa, Venice: Interior

Palazzo Contarini dal Zaffo Polignac, Venice

ascribed variously to Pietro Lombardo, Mauro Codussi or Giovanni Buora

Mauro Codussi: Torre del Orologio, Venice

Mauro Codussi: San Zaccaria, Venice

Mauro Codussi: San Michele in Isola, Venice (1469)

Potentially Interminable Set-piece

Mauro Codussi: Procuratie Vecchie, Venice

The distance of approximately 600 feet had been set in 1172 when Doge Sebastiano Ziani doubled the original size of Piazza San Marco by ordering the removal of a church further way from the basilica to enhance the latter's importance. Between them on the north stretches the regular rhythm of the Procuratie Vecchie, the headquarters of the shrine of St. Mark's numerous officials. The ritual life of the city, as perceived in the renaissance has the function of expressing not merely the prevailing civic order, but by implication also the divine, and that identity could be celebrated both by temporary human action through processions or by permanent architectural and urban ensembles.

Torre del Orologio, Piazza San Marco, Venice

Successive Venetian administrations sought to enhance the physical majesty of Piazza San Marco, beginning with the construction of the Clock Tower in the 1490s to designs attributed to Mauro Codussi (d. 1504). This structure, in the latest classical manner, made a terminus both for the view from the entry point to the city and was a triumphal ornament to the densely packed route through the city to the Rialto.