Thursday, November 12, 2009

Buzzers and Knockers

Throughout Venice you'll see the iconic Lion of St. Mark.
There are great statues and architectural adornments which feature this lion.
But you'll see lions in little places too.
Here are two of them.

For starters, there are a lot of doorbell buzzers in Venice, and some of them have the face of a lion.

The doorhandles and doorknockers also often pay tribute to the Lion of San Marco.
Lions are strong, impressive, and quite worthy of reproduction.
I wonder if such reverence would be present if Venice's symbol were a turkey or a dachshund.

1 comment:

Bob Easton said...

We have a bronze lion knocker on our front door, right here in New York.

While you might think of them as Venetian, they are common throughout Italy and the Adriatic region, probably anywhere that Venetians ruled. We brought ours home from Florence.