Walking tour of Venice with a guide

 This morning we took a walking tour of Venice with a guide that explained some amazing history.  By 1500 the city had completely been built and a person climbed each watch tower and mapped the city.  This map is still used today.  Over 100 canals and 400+ bridges but back in the 1500’s they only had 200+ bridges.  Here are some pics of the architecture.

Notice the tower in the above picture and how it is leaning.  Mac below does his best to straighten it up.  Most of the buildings here are connected to each other, sometimes even over a canal so they brace each other.  The clock towers don’t have this ability so they begin to lean over time and in St. Marco Square that tower actually fell over and had to be rebuilt in the 1800s.  

The below white building is the fanciest hotel in Venice and is where George Clooney got married.

The Rialto footbridge was built in the 1500s on wood pilings.  It is all marble and is still standing today.  They had a new footbridge built in 2007 in another part of the city and it is already falling apart.  

Liberia Acqua Alta:  the below bookstore has flooded several times.  Instead of throwing the books away they began using them to cover the walls and even have them as a small staircase in side the building.  

If you zoom in you will see XI then 20.  It was 11:22 when I took the picture.  The marble rotates every 5 minutes.  The dial below tells the day, month, and even moon phase.