The five domes of San Marco were originally low-profile domes constructed of brick and barely visible from the sea over the skyline of Venice.   Cross-sectional images of San Marco reveal that the domes were raised by the construction of wooden frames over the original brick domes. These wooden frames created the skeletal form of the domes’ bulbous, circular shape.  These wooden skeletons were then covered with lead, creating an open chamber above the Byzantine-style brick domes.  The Venetians completed the raising of the domes by 1260.  The completed domes are emulations of Islamic domes seen by Venetian merchants in cities under Islamic rule, such as Cairo or Damascus.

In the Islamic world, domes indicated that the building beneath them functioned as a mosque, a place of worship, but also as a tomb.[2. Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 21.]   By raising the height of the domes, the Venetians placed a higher visual importance on San Marco because it now could be seen from the sea, and boasted the structure as the visual representation of Venice’s lucrative economic relations with the Middle East, in addition to its function as a representation of Venice’s power in  the Latin Empire.