Piazza San Marco

A topographical cabinet card showing a view of St Mark's Square (Italian: Piazza San Marco) in Venice. Generally known by Venetians as simply 'la Piazza,' it forms the social, cultural and religious centre of the city. Napoleon supposedly called it 'the drawing room of Europe,' though the attribution is unproven.

Photographed by Carlo Ponti of Venice.

Carlo Ponti studied photography in Paris in the 1840s. In 1852, he obtained a license to produce and sell photographs in Venice. He ran the first of the big photographic businesses in the city, producing albums with architectural views of great artistic sensitivity. He was also the inventor of camera lenses suitable for panoramic photography.