The tower that fell down and rebuilt brick by brick.

Here's the Piazza San Marco story. On the morning of 14 July 1902, the bell tower that had stood over the square for nine hundred years simply collapsed, straight down, so neatly that it barely touched the buildings around it. Nobody was killed. The only casualty was the caretaker's cat.

The Venetians didn't redesign it or modernise it. They rebuilt it exactly as it had been, brick for brick, under a motto that's become famous in its own right: com'era, dov'era, as it was, where it was. It reopened on 25 April 1912, timed deliberately for St Mark's feast day, which was, by tradition, exactly one thousand years after the original tower's foundations were first laid. Ten centuries, one collapse, and a rebuild so faithful you'd never know the difference standing in the square today.

I painted the square in watercolour and ink, that tall brick tower catching the light. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Piazza San Marco, Venice · Travel Poster