Doge's Palace, Venice · Travel Poster

Each poster comes with a letter home. Ella writes about the place and its hidden history, and the details that never makes it into the guidebooks.

Built into the palace's walls, carved into the shape of a lion's snarling face, are stone letterboxes known as the bocche di leone, mouths of lion. Created after a failed conspiracy against the Doge in 1310, they let any citizen drop in an anonymous written denunciation against a neighbour, for tax evasion, blasphemy, treason, almost anything at all, and the state would act on it. Grand ceilings and gilded halls above, and a formal postal system for informing on your neighbours built right into the stonework below.

This poster is an original illustration in watercolour and ink, painted exclusively for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.