The palace with a postbox to inform on your neighbours

Here's the Doge's Palace detail that I found the most interesting. Set into the stonework, easy to walk straight past, are small carved stone faces shaped like snarling lions, each with a narrow slot for a mouth. They're called bocche di leone, mouths of lion, and they were introduced after a failed conspiracy against the Doge in 1310.

Any citizen could write out an accusation against someone else, tax evasion, blasphemy, treason, almost any offence you could name, and post it anonymously through the lion's mouth. The state genuinely acted on what came through. So alongside the gilded ceilings, the grand council chamber and all that Renaissance splendour, the palace also ran what amounted to a formal postal system for reporting your neighbours, built quietly into the walls of the building itself.

I painted the palace in watercolour and ink, all that pale stone and pink marble facing the lagoon. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Doge's Palace, Venice · Travel Poster