B. Describing the City and its Uses

Venetians were remarkably reticent when it came to physical descriptions of the local terrain. Francesco Sansovino, in his Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, has fairly limited ways of describing things. When he discusses a church, he is content to discuss the artistic ornamentation in terms of whom it commemorates; as to matters of space and location, the level of his treatment may be seen in his section on the Castello sestiere, where he describes location only in the most general terms, as for San Provolo: "sottoposto alle Donne monache di San Zaccaria."[1] Only occasionally does he discuss architectural form, as in San Severo ("l'antica forma e picciol Tempio") or S. Francesco della Vigna ("sul modello di Sansovino"), preferring instead to deal with the history of a building, usually in terms of the events which occurred within.[2]

Marin Sanudo, in Laus urbis Venetae, takes a view of the physical setting of Venice that may have been constrained more by the local Realpolitik than by actual topography.[3] He opens his description by stating that Venice is "amidst the billowing waves of the sea."[4] At the same time, she is protected by the natural gateways of marsh that surround the city, while she possesses no surrounding walls or artificial gateways.[5] The Grand Canal is one of the first things that Sanudo mentions, and other rii are seen in its context, for they "lead off the Grand Canal."[6] Sanudo respects both land and water transport. He notes that the Cannaregio Canal has pavements along it,[7] but he mentions boats several times: "At low tide, it is difficult to go by boat," of which there are an "infinite number"; "no gentleman is without one or more."[8]

Sanudo's sense of space, and of ordering within the space, is somewhat disordered and inconsistent to our own eyes. He describes the city in terms of the sestieri, beginning with the easternmost (Castello) and then running up the eastern side of the Grand Canal and down the western side, so that he appears to be running counter-clockwise around the city. Within any given sestiere, he does not move in any consistent direction, but jumps randomly from one notable sight to another. When he explores the Piazza San Marco, he begins with the church and its treasury, continues through the Piazza to the western end, returns to a small piazza behind San Marco, and then describes the Piazzetta, goes around the corner to the Mint and the warehouses, and then jumps back to the Campanile, before exiting to the Mercerie. He is thus tracing out a clockwise circumambulation of first the Piazza and then the Piazzetta.[9] Much of Sanudo's descriptive order may be seen as operating on a radial principle, with him (or Venice) at the center. This Venice-centric view is also seen in his images of the city as an entrepôt with merchandise, be it fish for the day's food, or goods to be traded throughout Europe, coming into Venice from all directions.[10]

Finally, perhaps as much due to his rhetorical training as to his spatial perceptions, Sanudo seems to regard Venice almost as a memory palace. Any location can touch off an entire flood of reminiscence and information. As discussed previously in reference to campi and navigation, this would appear to go with a nodal system of cognitive spatial organization.[11] We therefore see in Sanudo three systems of navigation: nodal, radial and circumabulatory. The nodal system may be linked to maps, and particularly to portolan maps; the radial and circumabulatory systems, as we shall see, derive from sensitivity to a ritualized use of space.

It is almost certainly a truism that in order to have something fully described, it should be observed and written up by someone foreign to the milieu. Certainly in the case of Venice, some of the most informative reports, from the standpoint of fundamental details, are those produced by visitors to the city. Pietro Casola, Pero Tafur, Fynes Moryson and Thomas Coryat all provide descriptions that include basic information that Venetians almost invariably neglected to provide. However, for purposes of general spatial perception, these are not relevant, as they are examples of how non-Venetians perceived the local space; unfortunately, they cannot be used as authorities on Venetian perception. Where these outlanders come into their own is in discussion not of how the spaces were perceived in the abstract, but how they were used in particular ways.

One of the largest bodies of documentation for Venetian spatial description appears in local accounts, not of how the space appeared, but in how it was used--and the majority of the documented uses were for ritual purposes. In addition, ritual, as we shall see, has a close bearing on liminality, and thus an understanding of how Venetians saw and used their ritual space can be used later as a basis for exploring Venetian involvements with liminality, both actual and depicted. The documentation for processional and other ritual behavior in Venice exists in quantity, but not in configurations that produce unified bodies of evidence. There is very little archival material that assembles all of the details for any one ritual operation, or that will tell us everything we need to know about, for example, movement via water. The best that we can arrive at is a relatively "thick" description assembled from many disparate parts, frequently giving information not so much by how things are described, but by what is described and what is left out.

Sources for Venetian ritual behavior vary widely in form and quality. They include governmental documents, the archives of individual scuole, and documents that have been preserved as part of the archives of the Basilica San Marco. A number of these documents are in the form of ceremonial books, directions for a particular organization, meant to accomplish the ceremonies in which that organization or entity--Doge, Basilica San Marco, church, scuola grande, scuola piccolo--took part. These documents are therefore highly specific to particular entities, and at best give vague or general information about the behavior of other organizations involved in the same ceremony. Further, the nature of these ceremonial books is descriptive rather than prescriptive. They do not instruct the reader in exactly how to carry out the ceremony; instead, they explain what was done, while generally not bothering to explain how it was accomplished. To use a theatrical metaphor, such manuals are less in the nature of a prompt script, and more like a set of director's notes, or even a critic's review; the seasoned performers do not need blocking for every detail, but do occasionally need to be reminded of the order in which things either occur or are positioned.[12] Written stage directions are never complete and never thoroughly adhered to; the recovery of the actual blocking for a given performance is therefore almost impossible under historical conditions. The general feeling among Venetian chroniclers and masters of ceremonies appears to have been that "everyone knows what they did on such and so a day, so why record it in any detail unless something bizarre happened?" There are, as a result, of necessity certain difficulties in the recovery of processional itineraries; frequently one must accept the pictorial evidence as the record, tempering it with map knowledge of what was possible or likely.

One curious feature of the surviving documents is that their essential qualities change over time, with different emphases in reporting. For example, in the Collegium Cerimoniale, earlier reports of ducal ceremonies concentrated on the Doge's role as Piovane, or visitor. By 1590, this changed radically, so that almost all of the entries appear to be reports of the arrivals of ambassadors and other visitors of high rank. It is not entirely clear whether this shift in emphasis was the result simply of different chroniclers, or whether there was a shift in what the government found important. Most likely of all is a policy of only reporting the novel: repetitions of a set ceremony would not require individual description.

Ceremony books and other archival materials for individual scuole were likely to contain an even less consistent emphasis. While the original mariegole, or rule books, for various confraternities contained general instructions as to the scuola's constitution and behavior, later additions could be startlingly specific as to the things that appear to have preoccupied the banca, or governing board. For example, in the 1489 additions to the mariegola of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, we find that the most worrisome item, to the point that it became part of the official rules, was the exact order of candle distribution for the ceremonies.[13] During the same time period, the scuola was occupied in moving its headquarters from the church of San Silvestro to a free-standing site behind the Frari, and there is in fact a record of the transfer of the body of their patron saint to the new location. One might therefore expect to find an entry updating the ceremonial behavior of the confraternity, taking into account new processional routes, but the mariegola contains none.[14]

The Registro of the Guardian di Matin of the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista is in many ways similar to a mariegola but covers a limited period, as well as containing only a carefully bounded subset of the confraternity's wide range of activities.[15] In its discussion of processions (eighth section) it mentions many dates and times, persons, apparatus, and regalia. This chapter also notes the final destination of processions, but makes no mention of how the processants were to get there. Still, such a document can be a valuable source of locational information. Jonathan Glixon, in his exploration of the musical activities of the scuole grandi, has drawn spatial conclusions from this document by interpolation of the evidence.[16] He has produced a number of provisional maps of processions made by the confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista, based upon prescribed starting points, end points, and on the known popular routes through the city in the sixteenth century. While granting that these routes are somewhat speculative, he suggests that, in general, they conform well to what must have actually taken place.

There are several other sources for processional behavior and the local attitudes toward ritual space; they are all narrative in character. Francesco Sansovino discusses several festivals, as opposed to rituals, in some detail, but is more interested, again, in discussing the history of a given spectacle or procession, its participants, and any incidental props or machinery than he is in describing the spatial component. For example, he describes the Giovedi Grasso festival in the following terms:

Fra l'antiche s'rodino quella del Giovedi grasso in piazza, dinanzi alla Signoria. Percioche havende Ulrico Patriarca d'Aquilea mosse l'arm contra la Republicca vinto & preso in una giornata: su su institito per legge irrevocabile sotto gravissime pen, che in memoria perpetua di tanta vittoria, si facesse ogni anno la predetta festa. Et si soleva sententiar a morte all'offitio del Proprio in numero 12. porci, con un toro, al quale si al tagliaste la testa. Et andata la Signoria nella Sala del Piovego dove era un castello di legno, i Senatori con alcune bracciolari in mano, lo combattevano, trahendoli in quel castello. Il quale uso, parendo ai Principe Gritti, che fosse ridicolo affatto, se bene ordinato da gli antichi Padri, su del tutto di uato via, restando solamente la feste in Piazza, del folaro & del tagliar la testa al toro, che tocca al arte di fabri, & lascia ta anco de parte la morte de porci, de quale si foleva mandar ad ogni Senatore, un pezzo d'essi per ricordanza della predetta vittoia.[17]

In the entire paragraph, there are only two locational cues. Actions, props, attendants, history: these are the things worthy of narration.

More useful, partly because of its sheer comprehensiveness, is the mammoth set of diaries compiled by Marin Sanudo.[18] Sanudo describes in varying degrees of detail anything that affects the operation of the government in its formal and public aspects, from visits by foreign ambassadors to the formal visits made by the Doge to various parts of Venice as part of the liturgical and ceremonial year. His level of detail increases over the thirty or so years in which he kept his diary, so that things which in the early volumes receive very little notice become more fully described in his final pages. Some of these descriptions include information as to how and where certain ceremonies took place, in at least as much detail as the ceremony books, so that Sanudo's diaries provide a useful comparison to these latter documents.

The failure on the part of Venetian writers is undoubtedly due to the knowledge that their local audience, immersed from birth in the culture, would not need the spatial cues provided by a fuller description. The local emphasis on ordering and temporality is perfectly in keeping with an audience who, even if they had never directed or led a particular procession before, certainly had marched in it or followed it through the well-known streets of the city. All of these sources, whether prescriptive, descriptive, local narrative or foreign observation, supply necessary facts, but no single source provides an ideal presentation of information for any procession or other ritual use of space. The remainder of this section is an attempt to draw out coherent patterns of spatially-oriented ritual behavior both from my own data and from that of others.

Ritual behavior was something in which almost every inhabitant of the city of Venice participated at some time in their lives. Governmental officials were constantly involved in processional behavior that featured the Doge as a mediating element for the city as state. The Doge's ritual calendar was filled with feasts, many of them moveable, for which he was expected to make an appearance in one of a number of roles. Many of these performances involved a journey to some spot in the city, frequently a church or monastery, often to give or receive some ritual object. Others involved carefully calculated movements in the general area of the Doge's Palace, the Basilica San Marco and the Piazza. For all of these rituals, the Doge's retinue was minutely specified in number, rank, and order of appearance. For the most important occasions, the participation of the four (later six) scuole grandi was also required, again specified as to rank and costume.

Other ritual behavior, not involving the interests of the city as a whole, took place on a smaller scale. Individual scuole grandi marched in their own private processions, as did the scuole piccole. The scuole grandi also, reflecting their origins as scuole di battuti, held Sunday morning flagellation sessions in which the members marched anonymously while employing penitential equipment.[19] All of this behavior was of the traditional sort to be found in any Italian or indeed any European town of the period. Where Venice differed from its counterparts was in the vast amount of public ritual behavior engaged in by the government with the assistance of both the church and the citizenry.[20]

Other unofficial behavior, open to any inhabitant, was the participation in everyday religious ritual. In a time when such activities ran the gamut from daily devotions in a specially-commissioned chapel down to the required once-yearly confession and attendance at mass, the most prominent outlet was generally that of the funeral ritual, in the role of family, mourner, or interested spectator.

The question of who controlled what ritual is best answered by the context of the documents prescribing or describing such ceremonies. For the governmental arm, the relevant ceremony books for the Doge and for the Basilica San Marco indicate the presence of a master of ceremonies for each institution.[21] These officials determined how a particular ceremony was ordered and produced. Knowledge relating to this was transmitted through the ceremony books, which prescribe the time, the attendance and perhaps the costuming; other information appears to have been passed down experientially, through actual participation in the ceremonies. Perhaps the best analogy for such a ceremony book and its contents would be that of a modern-day appointment diary: the date, time and perhaps the address of appointments are specified, as well as any special requirements, but directions for driving to engagements are generally omitted, on the principle that either the owner of the diary has already visited the destination and therefore knows the way, or, if the destination is unfamiliar, the owner is able to consult a map or other directions that will not fit an appointment book format. In Venice, once the master of ceremonies had witnessed a particular ritual--and it is likely that such officials were chosen for their long familiarity with the state machinery, generally as a participant--he would know, through experience, those details that now elude us.

Although the ceremony books controlled the actions of the master of ceremonies, the decisions as to what those ceremonies might be, and any changes concerning them were controlled by a governmental body. Private organizations, such as the scuole, also, as we have seen, had some form of ceremony books. In these cases, the presiding officer for ceremonial--and here the terminology varies, but in several cases among the scuole grandi he is known as the Guardian da Matin[22]--organized the ceremonies, arranged the meeting times and locations, and distributed such ceremonial equipment as vestments and candles. Although the scuole were essentially private religious organizations, their general behavior was under the control of the Council of Ten, who under the rubric of their charter to handle "public order" regulated the scuole's public appearances both as to frequency and comportment. For example, we find that it is the Council of Ten that raised the scuola piccola of San Rocco to scuola grande status, and it is the same Council that, when faced with a challenge to public order when a fight broke out between the members of two scuole grandi over the subject of precedence, ordained once and for all the order in which the scuole grandi were to process around the Piazza San Marco when more than one scuola was present. They also instituted fines for members who showed up without the appropriate processional equipment, and in addition regulated such equipment so that it did not become overwhelmingly elaborate, to the detriment of the underlying ritual.

Having gotten this far without making any distinctions as to the varieties of ritual behavior in Venice, I will now address this issue. I have been using the word "ritual" rather loosely in this section to indicate any ceremonial behavior, sacred or otherwise in nature. This general definition, in addition to embracing the relatively strictly constructed "ritual" also must include festivals and spectacles, where a "spectacle" is a carefully choreographed appeal to the senses and/or narrative form, that makes a distinction between audience and participant, and a "festival" is a spectacle in which the boundaries have become blurred, not only between audience and participant, but also between prescribed and spontaneous behavior and presentation.[23]

The operation of public, state-oriented ritual behavior in Venice was conditioned by the state's desire to re-present the crucial events in Venetian history in a way that would sustain the image of the state, both for internal and external consumption. The collective memory of the past was re-fashioned so as to reflect the official history that made up the so-called "myth of Venice," a myth that was almost self-sustaining, and that was at least partially self-generating in its retelling of the settlement of Venice as the creation of a separate world.[24] These rituals were made public in Venice as part of the collective mobilization of symbols and their related memories. Although the intent was a collective one, in practice the common aim was achieved through deliberate appeals for participation to a number of social groups. As Maurice Halbwachs has argued, "It is through their membership of a social group--particularly kinship, religious and class affiliations that individuals are able to acquire, to localise and to recall their memories."[25] The result in Venice was that the patriciate, its serving governmental officers, the cittadini, the religious establishment and the populace at large all joined together both as individual groups--governmental offices, scuole piccoli, scuole grandi, mesteri d'arti--and as the city as a whole in a ritualized use, not only of the Piazza San Marco and its component parts and environs, but also of the urban fabric as a whole, sacralizing it not only through the use of its space but through the forging of powerful symbolic ties. The Doge himself was made the incarnation of the relics of St. Mark as part of the coronation ceremony.[26] He was also made the representative of the city in the face of the divine, and every year would sail out to the lagoon and symbolically marry the city to the sea, thus formally tying Venice back to the watery element that pervaded it. At the same time that these were rituals of affirmation and connection of populace to sacred space, they also served another function, one that Georges Balandier finds common to all state rituals: the masking of unpleasant truths, a communal forgetting, a formal way of sweeping things under the rug.[27] Such rituals are communal rewritings, in which any negative aspects of the relationship between church, state and populace are ignored in favor of a glamorized retelling of heroic myths. In Venice, the glorification was that of valorous Roman origins and current governmental perfection. What remained unspoken, particularly in the sixteenth century and beyond, was the reality of a state whose economic and political power was fading rapidly.

The main form of public ritual behavior in Venice, even when part of re-enactment, involved procession. The employment of processions in a sacred theater, in which the participants "became actors performing the cosmic journey of society" was natural to a society in which the image of communal aspiration and cooperation was paramount.[28] Processions frequently took place in the Piazza San Marco, but other venues might also be involved. The language used to describe many of the ritual occasions involving the Doge and his retinue when they left the confines of the Piazza is that of going to a specified goal--the "andata alla . . ." where the blank spot would normally be filled with the name of a church or other religious establishment. Many times, the journey was accompanied by specified actions by the Doge and others at the journey's destination, usually in the form of a re-enactment or the transfer of a gift; other times, the accomplishment of the journey itself was the ritual process. In all of these cases, the ducal procession had a specified ending or point of closure as well as a beginning. Instead of dispersing after the ceremony, the company would communally process back to the Palazzo Ducale, which generally had been the starting point.[29] Since this was both the Doge's headquarters and his domicile, rather than the home territory of any of the other members of the procession, the primacy of the Doge was reinforced by the returning procession. However, this was not the only result of that return journey. By tracing a return trip as well as a journey out, and returning to the starting point, such processions became, in essence, circumambulations; they marked a temporary sacred space within the urban fabric, thus physically tying the city as a whole into space that was sacred to the community.

Venice, by virtue of its physical makeup, was different from almost all other medieval and Renaissance towns in one important respect, noted by many chroniclers both foreign and domestic: it had no city walls. This produced an anomalous situation with regard to the machinery of the state; in other towns, the imprint of the physical presence of the ruler was made by means of entries and progresses. Entries imply that there is an articulated formal, physical means of entering the city; this is normally accomplished by a procession from outside the city through the largest doorway or archway available in the city walls. Since Venice had no such enclosure, and also lacked a true framing device at any place that might be used for such formal appearances from the water, this particular form of highlighting the Doge's physical presence was difficult to accomplish. It was made even less likely by the fact that "entry" also implies a different immediately previous location. The Doge, as ruler of the city-state, did, by the middle of the fifteenth century, control Venetian possessions on the terraferma, but he was prohibited from visiting them by long-standing legislation preventing his removal from the city precincts. The Venetian solution to this complex of problems was ingenious. It consisted in the notional marking-off of the Palazzo Ducale from the rest of the city, in order to allow the Doge to emerge from it, via the Porta della Carta, for the purpose of displaying his physical presence to the populace. The processions (andate) to other locations in Venice, in addition to their status as circumambulations, were also, therefore, "progresses," in which the Doge left his usual haunts in the symbolic heart of the city, and went into the "countryside" of the town as a whole, thus underlining the existence of the city of Venice as an independent realm.

It is important to understand the significance of ritual behavior in the context of the space in which the ritual takes place; behavior frequently is attuned to a particular locale, and in many cases the original impetus for a ritual arose from the physical terrain as well as the religious or social. In a discussion of the ritualized uses of space, the first step is to apprehend the nature of space, and then to explore the ways in which space and ritual interact. The main problem with understanding space in this context is that while the human body moves through and responds kinesthetically to "space," the human brain feels that it is dealing with "place," a related but different concept. "Place" may be defined as a location or spot about which we have expectations--in other words, we make assumptions and form opinions about what can occur or has occurred in a place.[30] "Space," according to John Jekle, is "a problem of orientation"--that is, we do not expect things about a space, but instead attempt to find or locate ourselves within it. As Christian Norberg-Schulz has pointed out, places are designated by nouns, but "space, as a system of relations, is denoted instead by prepositions." Places, like spaces, may be either natural or man-made. For Norberg-Schulz,

Manmade places are related to nature in three basic ways. Firstly, man wants to make the natural structure more precise . . . he wants to visualize his "understanding" of nature . . . Secondly man has to complement the given situation, by adding what it is "lacking." Finally he has to symbolize his understanding of nature (including himself). . . . All the three relationships imply that man gather the experienced meanings to create for himself an imago mundi or microcosmos which concretizes his world.[31]

For students of ritual, the difference between "space" and "place" plays out in the history and performance of the ritual. While to the participants and spectators, the ritual occurs in a place (e.g. the Piazza San Marco) and thus takes on a symbolic layer based on the expectations and memories comprising the sense of the place, in actuality the ritual is a performance taking place in one or more physical spaces whose very format determines a great proportion of the ritual experience.

Thomas Barrie suggests that movement through space is an important component of the architectural experience, rivaled only by vision; other students of architecture, kinesics and proxemics believe that vision is in itself strongly connected to sensations of movement.[32] Experiencing architecture can therefore, at least by a trained observer, be accomplished either through vision, movement, or both. Whether a path through space is followed visually or physically, the experience of perceiving the surrounding architecture is one of a narrative, not simply of events, but also of spatial experiences, "an unfolding story that . . . manipulates one's sense of time."[33]

Given that space is primarily a phenomenon of orientation, what are the components necessary for both an adequate description of spaces and adequate orientation by persons experiencing them? In Image of the City Kevin Lynch proposes the following descriptors: path, edge, district, node and landmark.[34] These turn out to be sufficient for orientation; although they provide an incomplete description of abstract spaces, they are useful enough when describing the experiences of someone actually immersed in such a space.[35] Some of this discussion will employ these terms; although it appears that "district" and "node" are somewhat less useful for describing the interaction of spaces and ritual than are the other three, they are perhaps the most useful for mental models of navigation. All of these descriptors have the advantage of supplying the narrative context for moving through a space, because they divide an otherwise continuous experience into discrete chunks.[36] Thus, much of the discussion of these components tends to center on the connections between components, or on the transitional aspect of moving from one component to another. In fact, one entire component, the edge, in itself embodies the idea of transition, as a separation or joining of portions of the environment. Edges appear to be, perhaps as a function of this status as meta-descriptor, the most important of the descriptors. The transitions marked by edges may work either to separate or to connect; when used to connect, they supply a higher level of "place-ness," as in the bridges that Heidegger sees as tying together the landscape.[37]

The apparent tension between the modes of perceiving space by existing in it, and by moving through it, is resolved by understanding architecture in volumetric terms, so that it provides a space both to surround the observer and to move past him.[38] The difference lies in the difference between kinesthetic and visual perception; kinesthetically, an observer feels motion while walking through an enclosure, but his visual reaction is static until he begins to exit the enclosure, at which time a new scene has appeared. The volume of the space affects him in ways that his visual perceptions do not. Kinesthetically, the exit experience, although different in quality from that of moving through the enclosure, is not different in kind in the way that the two visual experiences are. The disjunction between the visual and the kinesthetic is at least partially related to the sense of time; monotony, whether arising from an imposed but undifferentiated rhythm (such as in a long colonnade), or from complete undifferentiation of a space, can cause the time sense to expand, so that while the kinesthetic sense is noting rhythm and movement, the visual sense sees an unchanging scene, and the time sense is stretching, more in accord with the visual sense than the kinesthetic.

Although much of the work on the relationship between architecture and ritual is conducted within the context of "sacred architecture," which would appear to rule out civic and secular rituals and spaces from consideration, in actuality the definition of sacred architecture is sufficiently broad that a loose reading will satisfy all cases. Barrie describes sacred architecture as "places built to symbolize the meanings and accommodate the rituals of the particular belief systems of its time."[39] For Barrie, meaning in sacred architecture is constructed in three different ways: overt representation of aspects of the religion (e.g. the Arena Chapel as a canvas for displaying the life of Christ); the composition of the form of the architecture; and the correspondence between the ritual and the form, on both the facilitating and symbolic levels. Further, "the architecture . . . in essence acts as a stage that accommodates and facilitates the enactment of the myth through ritual," while often being a narrative of symbolic images and spaces.[40]

Sacred architecture is designed to produce a new sacred place or to enhance an existing one. Sacred places have symbolic functions; frequently they are seen as the center of the world, or even as an omphalos, or an imago mundi, the worldly representation of a celestial city.[41] Such a sacred place is in fact what Mircea Eliade calls an "earthly reproduction of a transcendent model"--the closest the person inside could get to Paradise in his earthly span.[42] Sacred space exists apart from everyday existence, and its area of influence must therefore be circumscribed. An enclosure of some sort contains the sacred space, and provides a boundary dividing it from the mundane.[43] Such a space, within its boundaries, frequently employs shape or axiality as a key symbolic element. For Roman builders, axiality consisted in lining up with the existing natural sacred landscape, a landscape that was both physical and directional. For Christians, the visually similar axiality was much more symbolic, drawing its inspiration from the shape of the cross. Whether Greek, Roman or Christian, such an axial sacred space was not only an imago mundi, but also an axis mundi. Such an intersection of heaven, earth and the underworld frequently employed a tangible object, generally some sort of sacred column, at the axial meeting point, as a "hinge structure [joining] sky and earth."[44] A variation on this axiality and heavenly connection was found in Byzantine ritual and architecture, where the axis was made subordinate to the large central dome of the Greek cross-shaped church,[45] so that the connection to heaven, frequently accentuated by the application of gold mosaic to represent the heavenly light, was the paramount feature of the architecture.

In Venice's Piazza San Marco, axiality is not strictly enforced, except for the north/south direction, the axis connecting the clock tower with the Piazzetta. The historical western entry into the Piazza was an unarticulated opening to the side of the church of San Geminiano; while the northern side of the church was roughly on axis with the Basilica at the other end, there was no axis running directly between points of focus, and the exit experience from the Basilica was not one that involved a strong feeling of axiality. Further, the main ceremonial entry to the ducal precincts, the Porta della Carta, was not on axis with anything in the Piazza proper; its axial partner was the Campanile, which functions more as a hinge between the spaces of the Piazza and Piazzetta than as an axial element, so that the axis mundi of the Piazza/Piazzetta space is off-center and therefore more notional than physical, notable more for its columnar joining to heaven and its connecting function than for any true axiality (figure 3).

It should be noted that while "sacred geometry," the careful measurement and shaping the construction of spaces in accordance with religious symbolism, is frequently a feature of sacred or ritual places, it is not required. Spaces that have grown by accretion, or that have had to fit themselves into existing built-up areas, cannot be constructed with such precision. For example, the Piazza San Marco is not of perfect proportions; in fact it is not even regular in shape. The renovations begun by Sansovino were not designed to produce a perfect space; instead they promoted a particular visual effect, one that privileged and framed certain views, some of which were driven by axial concerns.

In addition to privileging axiality, most ritual spaces tend to emphasize paths and movement. Although paths frequently are taken as connections or movements between enclosures, so that they represent the process of departing from one space and journeying to another,[46] they also may be seen as defining movement within an enclosure. In either case, a path needs a clear directionality, or sense of "where to go." A path should emphasize the kinesthetic sense, and yet offer a degree of "visual scope," to enhance the observer's perceptions of passage, distance, rhythm and time.[47] In a sacred or ritual contest, paths have some typical components, as laid out by Barrie: "clearly articulated entry"; "sequence of increasingly sacred spaces"; "clear marking of path and edges"; "anticipation of attainment of sacred place"; "a symbolic story expressed by the path and place."[48] The segmented path is a "multidirectional series of connected paths that lead to the sacred place," whose extreme example is the labyrinth or maze. Such paths highlight the difficulties of the pilgrim's journey, and by their composition are perhaps among the most liminal of physical constructs, as there are numerous thresholds, resulting in multiple passage events and an expanded time sense. All paths, however, may be seen as liminal markers, for there is that clearly defined point of entry, a transition from the open space to the path, so that the sacred and the profane have a specific point at which they are separated.[49] While segmented paths provide thresholds and a narrative approach, the radial path establishes a "strong sense of center and destination."[50] Such a path is one of several that radiates out from a center--or is a path into the center.

The other class of path is that of circumambulating paths, which themselves fall into two types. As they mark a trail around a sacred space or object, they can be either inside or outside the enclosure. In either case, they "surround a central space or form the space itself." Circumambulation also suggests unity because of the way that the path and the space around the path create each other, to form a whole; neither path nor space is complete without the other.[51] In the Piazza San Marco, the path is inside the enclosure, marking the boundaries of sacred and public space, and functions in a most interesting way. The spaces outside the path, underneath the arcades of the buildings surrounding the Piazza, were mostly dedicated, as now, either to private commerce or to governmental business. While the exit from the Porta della Carta into the Piazza is in line with the Campanile and therefore not on any main axis, it is also in line with the edge of the Piazza. In other words, processions leaving the Palazzo Ducale via the Porta della Carta are already set up to circumambulate the Piazza, and to mark off, within that enclosure, the otherwise physically undifferentiated space that belonged to the sacred for the duration of the procession. Inside the circumambulating path, in the central area of the Piazza, the space was once again commercial and governmental, as may be seen in Gentile Bellini's Procession in the Piazza San Marco, where merchants and governmental figures are seen in the center of the Piazza, conversing in earnest groups. It was the physical movement of the procession, engaged upon the navigation of the interior of the enclosure, that defined the sacred space as a temporary entity.

All paths, whether circumambulating, radial or segmented, have a beginning and an end. Such points, which tend to be the focus of movement, function as nodes--attractors for motion, symbolism, assembly and directionality. In Venice, the Piazza San Marco is mentioned by Barrie as a particularly successful example of such a node, one that is a "strategic focus."[52] It is such a success because it fills all these nodal functions: its axial organization ensures that it is a marker of directionality; the symbolism is present because of its proximity to the main center of government and to the religious seat of the Doge. The large space allows for assembly in a place already loaded with symbolism; it also provides room for the assembled population to process around the perimeter or in the center. In addition, it is, if not an exact geographical center, strategically located in the sense of access from all parts of the city: it is between the Bacino and the Mercerie, just off the Grand Canal, with access to the Piazza from all of its sides.

Sacred spaces, while frequently enclosed and a destination of paths, also exist within a landscape, whether natural or man-made. The exigencies of the "pilgrim's journey" suggest that there should be physical difficulties placed in the way of the initiate in his ritual re-creation. One of the most common obstacles to reaching a sacred spot is altitude; the sacred goal is either up a mountain or is placed on a high spot reached by a simulacrum of a mountain such as a staircase. This is frequently the final portion of the path, emblematic of the difficulties of the pilgrim's way.[53] Although this is generally not applicable in the sea-level city of Venice, there are two exceptions, each with a well-defined ritual function, both in interior spaces: the high altar of the Basilica San Marco, and the Scala dei Giganti in the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, where the newly-elected Doge was shown to the public.

Not all sacred spaces are constructed for their sacred purpose at a single stroke. Particularly outdoors, a space may gradually take on various symbolic associations that then make it suitable as the locus of ritual. Other outdoor spaces become "sacred" simply because they are large enough to hold spectators, and close to sacred interiors. In Venice, the Piazza, originally simply the open solid ground in front of the Basilica and the Palazzo Ducale, was gradually transformed into a processional venue and the main focal point for the convergence of religio-political symbolism. Part of this is due to its location: it was in the middle of the most direct pedestrian path from the Bacino to the earliest commercial and residential areas. However, as one of the earliest settlement points, the abode of the dux, later Doge of Venice would necessarily be a key element in the Venetians' own retelling of the founding of their city as the creation of the world. The city of Venice is itself an example of the parallel accretion of architecture and symbolism. Becoming ever more dense, in a seemingly non-purposeful manner, it yet managed to become ever more liminal, with its multiplication of bridges and segmented paths, while also accumulating a history, a narrative of countless rituals to be played out via either repetition or re-creation.

It should by now be obvious that Venetians had internalized their unique topographical situation to the point where they almost never verbalized practical locational details, unless it was unavoidable. "Place" was subject to forms of memory other than the written and verbal. Instead, it appears to have been attached to particular movements, to specific performances, and most of all to the sequencing or ordering of things. Location is used as a marker, but almost always in the context of "such-and-such happens at this place," rather than "go to that place by way of such-and-such route, passing thus-and-so on the way."