S. Mark's façade is, I think, more beautiful in the mass than in detail.
Seen from the Piazza, from a good distance, say half way across it,
through the red flagstaffs, it is always strange and lovely and unreal.
To begin with, there is the remarkable fact that after years of
familiarity with this wonderful scene, in painting and coloured
photographs, one should really be here at all. The realization of a
dream is always amazing.

It is possible--indeed it may be a common experience--to find S. Mark's,
as seen for the first time, especially on a Sunday or fête day, when the
vast red and green and white flags are streaming before it, a little
garish, a little gaudy; too like a coloured photograph; not what one
thinks a cathedral ought to be. Should it have all these hues? one asks
oneself, and replies no. But the saint does not long permit this
scepticism: after a while he sees that the doubter drifts into his
vestibule, to be rather taken by the novelty of the mosaics--so much
quieter in tone here--and the pavement, with its myriad delicate
patterns. And then the traveller dares the church itself and the spell
begins to work; and after a little more familiarity, a few more visits
to the Piazza, even if only for coffee, the fane has another devotee.

At night the façade behaves very oddly, for it becomes then as flat as a
drop scene. Seen from the Piazza when the band plays and the lamps are
lit, S. Mark's has no depth whatever. It is just a lovely piece of
decoration stretched across the end.

The history of S. Mark's is this. The first patron saint of Venice was
S. Theodore, who stands in stone with his crocodile in the Piazzetta,
and to whose history we shall come later. In 828, however, it occurred
to the astute Doge Giustiniano Partecipazio that both ecclesiastically