The Place of St. Mark is the heart of Venice, and from this beats her life
in every direction through an intricate system of streets and canals that
bring it back again to the same centre. So, if the slightest uneasiness
had attended the frequency with which I lost my way in the city at first,
there would always have been this comfort: that the place was very small
in actual extent, and that if I continued walking I must reach the Piazza
sooner or later. There is a crowd constantly tending to and from it, and
you have but to take this tide, and be drifted to St. Mark's--or to the
Rialto Bridge, whence it is directly accessible.

Of all the open spaces in the city, that before the Church of St. Mark
alone bears the name of Piazza, and the rest are called merely
_campi_, or fields. But if the company of the noblest architecture
can give honor, the Piazza San Marco merits its distinction, not in Venice
only, but in the whole world; for I fancy that no other place in the world
is set in such goodly bounds. Its westward length is terminated by the
Imperial Palace; its lateral borders are formed by lines of palace called
the New Procuratie on the right, and the Old Procuratie on the left;
[Footnote: In Republican days the palaces of the _Procuratori di San
Marco_.] and the Church of St. Mark fills up almost its whole width
upon the east, leaving space enough, however, for a glimpse of the Gothic
perfection of the Ducal Palace. The place then opens southward with the
name of Piazzetta, between the eastern facade of the Ducal Palace and the
classic front of the Libreria Vecchia, and expands and ends at last on the
mole, where stand the pillars of St. Mark and St. Theodore; and then this
mole, passing the southern facade of the Doge's Palace, stretches away to
the Public Gardens at the eastern extremity of the city, over half a score
of bridges, between lines of houses and shipping--stone and wooden walls--