St Mark's Campanile

Stand at the foot of the tower and look straight up. The brick runs upward in long, flat strips, warm red against the pale Venetian sky. Pigeons cut across the piazza behind you. Somewhere above, out of sight, five bronze bells hang in an open belfry. When one of them swings, the sound drops down the shaft and spreads across the stone paving. It is the deepest voice in Saint Mark's Square, and it has been ringing over this city for centuries.

This is Saint Mark's Campanile, the bell tower of the basilica beside you. A campanile is simply an Italian bell tower, built apart from its church rather than attached to it. At close to one hundred metres tall, it is the tallest structure in Venice. In a city of narrow lanes and low rooftops, that height matters. From almost anywhere in the lagoon, sailors and fishermen could see this tower. It told them where the heart of the city stood.

The first tower on this spot went up in the early Middle Ages, probably as a watchtower over the harbour. Over the following centuries it was raised, repaired and rebuilt again and again. Fires, earthquakes and lightning all took their turn. The shape you see today largely comes from the early sixteenth century. That is when builders gave it the belfry, the square brick block above, and the tall green spire on top. At the very summit, a gilded angel turns with the wind.

Now here is the first surprise. The tower in front of you is not old. On the morning of 14 July 1902, the original campanile cracked, groaned, and collapsed into a pile of brick and dust. Warning signs had appeared in the days before, so the square had been cleared. Remarkably, no person died. The story Venetians still tell is that the only casualty was the caretaker's cat.

The collapse shocked the city. Within hours, the town council made a decision that became a motto: "com'era, dov'era". It means "as it was, where it was". Venice would not build something modern in its place. It would rebuild the same tower, on the same spot, in the same form. Engineers strengthened the foundations and lightened the structure inside. The new campanile opened in 1912, on the feast day of Saint Mark, the city's patron saint.

So when you look at the brickwork, you are looking at an early twentieth century copy of a much older building. Yet it does not feel like a copy. The proportions are faithful. The colour of the brick has weathered over a hundred years of sea air. Most visitors in the square never guess that the tower is younger than many of the cafés around it. That idea — of rebuilding a lost monument exactly as it was — later influenced how other European cities approached their own losses.

Look down at the base of the tower, on the side facing the Doge's Palace. There you will see a small, elegant building of marble and bronze. This is the Loggetta, designed in the sixteenth century by the Renaissance architect Jacopo Sansovino. It once served as a meeting place for Venetian nobles, and later as a guard post. The 1902 collapse crushed it under falling brick. Workers recovered the fragments from the rubble, piece by piece, and put it back together.

Step closer to the Loggetta if you can. The bronze statues in its niches represent classical gods and virtues. The marble shows a mix of colours — red, white and grey — chosen to catch the light of the square. Look carefully and you may notice small differences in the surface, where old stone meets repaired stone. It is a quiet record of that day in 1902, written in marble rather than in a museum label.

Now think about those bells. Each one had a job in the old Republic of Venice. The largest is called the Marangona. Its name comes from the Venetian word for carpenters. It rang to mark the start and end of the working day for the shipbuilders at the Arsenal, the city's great naval shipyard. And here is the second surprise. When the tower fell, the Marangona survived. It is the only original bell still hanging up there today.

The other bells carried their own messages. One marked midday. Another called members of the city's councils to meetings in the palace next door. One bell, according to tradition, rang for public executions in the square. The city ran on these sounds. A Venetian in the fifteenth century did not need a clock. He listened to the campanile, and he knew the time, the news, and sometimes the mood of the government.

The tower has another claim to history. In 1609, the scientist Galileo Galilei climbed it with one of his early telescopes. He showed Venetian officials how the instrument could spot ships on the horizon long before the naked eye could. For a sea power like Venice, that was a practical gift. Today a plaque and the stories of guides keep that moment alive, and the view from the top still stretches far across the water.

And you can go up yourself. A lift carries visitors to the belfry, so there is no long staircase to climb. At the top, the city opens beneath you. You see the domes of the basilica, the red tile roofs, the curve of the Grand Canal, and the islands scattered across the lagoon. On a very clear day, especially in winter, the snow-covered Alps can appear on the northern horizon. Be ready for the bells. If they ring while you are up there, the sound is very loud.

Before you move on, take one more look from where you stand. Notice how the tower stands slightly apart, with open space all around it. That space lets the square breathe. Watch the shadow of the shaft slowly move across the paving stones as the day goes on. Listen for the next bell. When it rings, remember that one of those voices fell with the tower in 1902, rose again from the rubble, and still marks the hours for the city today.