Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica Guided Tours in Venice
Tours of St. Mark's Basilica and Doge's Palace
The Basilica of St. Mark and the Doge's Palace are the two must-see in Venice. The advantage of your visit: They are located right next to each other!
Senate Hall, Doge's Palace With a professional guide, the following guided tour includes a visit to the Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica but also, in option, Venice or a Gondola ride.
With these guided tours, you can admire Venice's two most famous and admired masterpieces: Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica.
The price of these guided tours also includes skip-the-line tickets to these two exceptional monuments of Venice.
Doge's Palace Guided Tour
The Doge's Palace is the jewel of the Republic of Venice.
The Doge's palace was both the home of the Doge and the seat of its parliament and the court of justice. Even where the Venetians of the neighbourhood were allowed to come and draw water from one of the two wells of the palace courtyard.
It is a luxurious palace made to impress the kings and queens or their ambassadors who went to Venice to meet the Doge.
Tintoretto, Paradise The architecture and the rich decoration with gold on the ceilings and on the palace walls with its vast rooms made the visitor feel humble.
Mouldings, sculptures, and hundreds of paintings painted by the greatest ones, including Veronese, Le Tintoret or Tiepolo, including the famous "Paradise" painting: 9m90 high and 24m50 wide!
And even if you are not king or queen, let it be true, thanks to the Doges and the Republic of Venice, you will be able to admire and enjoy all these masterpieces during this guided tour with the necessary explanations of your professional guide.
But this golden palace, where the Venetians were also judged, also had its own prisons, where Casanova was locked up, prisons that you can see after passing inside the Bridge of Sighs that connected them with the palace.
Guided Tour of St. Mark's Basilica, the Golden Basilica
Due to its golden mosaics, the Basilica of St. Mark's is also called the Golden Basilica, which you will understand as soon as you enter it.
S.Mark Atrium's Mosaics St. Mark's Basilica was also a political instrument of Venice, an element of its power in the world of that time.
To be convinced, it is enough to know that for centuries the basilica of St. Mark, an eminently sacred place where the body of one of the four evangelists is located, was not dependent on the church and was therefore outside the control of the Pope.
The Dean of the basilica and the members of its clergy were appointed directly by the Republic of Venice, without any control from Rome.
This will of Venice's independence, both politically and religiously, explains the totally Byzantine architecture of the basilica.
Venice decided to build a basilica that was as Byzantine as possible, far from the architectural rules of the other Christian basilicas of the time to stand out even more from Rome.
This Byzantine inspiration is found everywhere, in the patterns of the polychrome marbles of its soil, in its domes, and even more in its extraordinary millenary mosaics of totally Byzantine inspiration.
Your visit to St. Mark's Basilica will also include the famous Pala d'Oro and St. Mark's Treasure, jewels and relics in abundance!
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