The Lift: Riding the Elevator Up St Mark’s Campanile

Because you’ll be standing quite close to those five bells, it’s worth knowing that they do still ring on occasion, marking the hours and various civic and religious occasions, much as their predecessors did centuries ago.

Nobody expects modern Marangona (the largest bell, historically used to mark the start and end of the working day) to summon workers to the Arsenale anymore, but the acoustics up there are, shall we say, generous. If your visit happens to coincide with a scheduled ringing, you’ll know about it immediately and probably for several minutes afterward, in your ears. It’s a memorable part of the experience, if not always a gentle one.

It’s tempting to treat “there’s a lift” as a minor logistical footnote, but it genuinely changes who gets to experience one of Venice’s best views. Historic Italian towers are, almost as a rule, staircases with a view attached — beautiful, atmospheric, and entirely unforgiving toward anyone with joint pain, vertigo on tight spiral steps, a stroller, a wheelchair, or simply a healthy aversion to climbing 400 uneven medieval steps in July. The Campanile flips that script.

It’s also, frankly, just efficient. Where towers like Giotto’s Campanile in Florence require roughly 414 steps and a genuine cardiovascular commitment, Venice’s Campanile lets you bank all that energy for the rest of your sightseeing day — more steps left in reserve for wandering Dorsoduro, hunting down a decent spritz in Cannaregio, or getting mildly, happily lost near the Rialto Bridge.

A short, no-nonsense checklist for making the most of your ascent:

• Arrive early or late in the day for shorter queues and softer light for photos.
• Check the weather forecast, since clear skies make an enormous difference to the view.
• Book tickets online ahead of your visit during peak season to avoid unnecessary waiting.
• Wear something practical, since the open-air gallery can be breezy even on a warm day — Venice’s lagoon winds don’t ask permission.
• Bring a wide-angle camera lens or phone, since the panoramic sweep is hard to capture in a single standard shot.
• Time it with the Basilica or Doge’s Palace to make the most of your time in the piazza.
• Don’t rush the descent view — the elevator ride down still offers a brief, satisfying glimpse of the tower’s interior brickwork, a small reminder that you’re inside a genuinely old structure, even one rebuilt from scratch.

Construction on the bell tower began around the 9th century, originally serving a dual purpose as a lighthouse for boats navigating the lagoon and a watchtower for the Doge’s Palace next door. Over the following centuries it was rebuilt and reinforced multiple times, eventually taking the elegant, brick-and-stone form recognisable in every postcard of Piazza San Marco: a tall square shaft, a loggia partway up, a belfry with five bells (each historically assigned a different civic duty, from marking the start of the working day to announcing executions — Venetian bureaucracy at its most literal), a green pyramidal spire, and a golden statue of the Archangel Gabriel on top, doing his best weathervane impression.

And then, on 14 July 1902, the Campanile did something towers are generally not supposed to do: it fell down.

Witnesses reported hearing ominous cracking sounds for days beforehand, and city officials had enough warning to evacuate the piazza before the whole structure collapsed into a tidy pile of rubble. Remarkably, nobody was killed — the only casualty was the caretaker’s cat, according to popular legend, and even that story is disputed. The Venetian city council, in a display of civic determination that still deserves applause, voted the very next day to rebuild it “dov’era e com’era” — “where it was and how it was.” The reconstructed tower, completed in 1912, is a near-exact replica of the original, but engineered with stronger, more modern foundations.

Which brings us to today’s version of the Campanile: a tower that looks nine centuries old, is actually just over a hundred, and — crucially for your calves — was built in an era when elevators existed and someone thought, quite sensibly, “why not?”

Venice rewards patience and a good pair of walking shoes almost everywhere else, but the Campanile di San Marco is the rare exception — an ancient, dramatic, rebuilt-from-rubble bell tower that lets you skip the suffering and go straight to the payoff. The lift isn’t just a convenience; it’s arguably one of the most democratic pieces of infrastructure in the entire city, opening up a genuinely spectacular 360-degree view of Venice, its lagoon, and the mountains beyond to essentially anyone who can stand in a queue for a few minutes.

So when you’re planning your day around Piazza San Marco, don’t file the Campanile under “climb later, if there’s time.” Book the ticket, ride the elevator, and let the view do the work your legs won’t have to. In a city built entirely on water, bridges, and an apparently endless supply of steps, that’s a small miracle worth celebrating — one smooth, hundred-metre ride at a time.