Piazza San Marco

Napoleon called it "the drawing room of Europe," and for once, the little emperor wasn't exaggerating. Piazza San Marco is the only square in Venice that gets the title "piazza" — every other public space in the city is a mere "campo." That's not snobbery; it's a thousand years of accumulated swagger.

The square took centuries to reach its current form. What started as a modest patch of ground in front of the original 9th-century chapel grew into an enormous L-shaped piazza as the Republic expanded its ambitions. The Procuratie — the long arcaded buildings flanking the square — housed the procurators of St. Mark, officials who were second in power only to the Doge himself. The ground floors became the coffeehouses that still operate today, including Caffè Florian, which opened in 1720 and claims to be the oldest continuously operating coffeehouse in the world.

Acqua alta — high water — floods the piazza roughly sixty times a year, turning it into a shallow lake that perfectly mirrors the basilica. The city sets up raised walkways and plays classical music through speakers while tourists wade through ankle-deep water in plastic boot covers. It's simultaneously absurd and beautiful, which is Venice in a nutshell.

The Campanile, the bell tower that dominates the square, collapsed without warning on July 14, 1902. Remarkably, the only casualty was the caretaker's cat. The city rebuilt it exactly as it was — "dov'era e com'era" — and reopened it in 1912, exactly a thousand years after the original foundation was allegedly laid.