Sestiere San Marco

This guide to Sestiere San Marco in Venice begins in Alexandria in the year 828, where two Venetian traders, Buono from Malamocco and Rustico from Torcello, bargain with a monk guarding the body of a revered saint. It follows their scheme to get the relics past the harbor's customs officers and the perilous voyage home, threading in the young city's hunger for a holier patron than the one it already had. Best heard standing in the square, looking up at the district's winged-lion emblem.