What Is “Original” And “Authentic”?

The Basilica di San Marco and the Venetian concept of time

- Adam Lowe & Charlotte Skene Catling

“There is a time for everything… A time to tear down and a time to build… A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them… A time to be silent and a time to speak…” Ecclesiastes 3: 1, 3, 5, 7

We age and, as all things, we change over time. The Basilica di San Marco, the magnificent Italo-Byzantine conglomerate of a building in Venice, is a perfect self-declared manifesto illustrating the complex relationship between originality and authenticity. It is an accretion that has developed over time, through building, tearing down and rebuilding, destruction, theft, repurposing and reinvention. Here architecture takes on a geo-archaeological depth. Saint Mark’s Basilica began with the pious theft of the relics of Mark the Evangelist in 828. This first building was violently destroyed with its doge inside, but the saintly remains miraculously reappeared from a column.