The Loggetta and Clock Tower

A topographical cabinet card showing part of the Piazza San Marco in Venice. The building on the left is the Loggetta, built by Jacopo Sansovino in 1537-46. It was used as a lobby by patricians waiting to go into a meeting of the Great Council in the Doge's Palace and by guards when the Great Council was sitting.

Ini the background, on the far side of the square, is the Clock Tower (Italian: Torre dell'Orologio), completed in 1499. The high archway beneath the clock is the street known as the Merceria, leading to the Rialto, the city's commercial centre.

Photographed by Carlo Ponti of Venice.

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.