Biblioteca Marciana (detail)

The Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (English: National Library of St Mark) is a library and Renaissance building in Venice, northern Italy. It is one of the earliest surviving public libraries and depositories for manuscript in Italy and holds one of the greatest collections of classical texts in the world. It is named after St. Mark, the patron saint of the city.

The library, prominently located in Saint Mark’s Square with the long façade facing the Doge’s Palace, is the masterpiece of Jacopo Sansovino and a key work in Venetian Renaissance architecture. The great architect Andrea Palladio considered it “perhaps the richest and most ornate building that there has been since ancient times up until now” (“il più ricco ed ornato edificio che forse sia stato da gli Antichi in qua”), and Frederick Hartt described it as “surely one of the most satisfying structures in Italian architectural history”. No less important for its art, the library houses many works by the great painters of sixteenth-century Venice, making it a comprehensive monument to Venetian Mannerism.