Doge's Palace (Partial Colonnade Elevation) Piazza San Marco, Venice — completed circa 1424 The seat of Venetian government for nearly five centuries and the canonical image of Venetian Gothic. The elevation isolates the paradox that has fascinated observers since Ruskin: a heavy upper wall of pink and white marble rests on a delicate double colonnade of pointed arches and quatrefoil tracery — an inversion of structural expectation that gives the palace its weightless, almost textile presence above the lagoon. Architect unknown; attributed in part to Filippo Calendario.