Discover Campanile di San Marco

The shaft is built of fluted brick rather than solid stone, a lighter and cheaper construction method common to Venetian bell towers, faced in plain brick for most of its height with no ornament until the belfry near the top. The design deliberately separates structure from decoration -- the shaft carries the weight, while the loggia and belfry above it carry the ornament.

Jacopo Sansovino's marble loggia at the base, added in the 16th century, is a freestanding structure in its own right rather than a mere entrance -- niches for bronze statues and a balustrade give it a classical vocabulary distinct from the plain brick shaft rising above it.

The 1902-1912 reconstruction reused much of the original brick but added a reinforced concrete core and a redesigned foundation, addressing the settling and material fatigue believed to have caused the original collapse -- a rebuild that looked identical from the piazza while being structurally a different building underneath.