Asiyah Noemi Koso
SerpAPI
The Columns of San Marco and San Todaro are located at the end of the Piazzetta San Marco, between the beautiful Palazzo Ducale and the Libreria Marciana, and form a majestic setting for the vision of the San Marco Basin. On the tall granite columns there are the protectors of the city of Venice, on the right San Teodoro, in Venetian Todaro (from the Byzantine San Teodoro di Amasea), the first protector of the Venetians just arrived on the waters of the Lagoon, subsequently supplanted by San Marco Evangelista as soon as the mortal remains of the saint were transported here in 829, whose body was temporarily placed in the Ducal Chapel and precisely in the main church of San Teodoro. According to tradition, the columns were erected by Nicolò Barattiero under the doge of Sebastiano Ziani (1172-1178), when the square was enlarged and monumentalized. The enormous columns, transported from the East as spoils of war, must have been originally three, but the third columns was lost along with the ship that carried it during the landing. The marbles of the two columns (Egyptian red marble for the column of San Todaro and Troadense marble for the column of San Marco) were widely used for the erection of columns in late antiquity, which makes it almost certain that they came from Constantinople. At the top of the columns, as reported above, are the two patron saints of Venice, the ancient San Teodoro, a warrior who, according to tradition, defeated a dragon, and San Marco, whose remains were exported from Alexandria in Egypt, in 828. The evangelical symbol of the evangelist is the winged lion, for this reason a bronze lion was placed on the column adjacent to the Palazzo Ducale, which became the symbol of the lagoon city itself. It is extremely interesting that the passing between the two columns, or worse still, stopping between them is carefully avoided by the Venetians. Between the columns most of the death sentences were carried out, both by hanging and by quartering, quarters that were then exposed, as a warning to the population, on the four extreme sides of Venice, namely the first towards Chioggia, the second towards Padua, the third towards Mestre, relative to the Ponte dei Squartai, and the fourth towards San Nicolò del Lido.
