In other cities, the campanile was treated with some variety of form and decoration, as well as of material. In Lombardy and Venetia the square red-brick shaft of the tower is often adorned with long, narrow pilaster strips, as at Piacenza (p. 158, Fig. 91) and Venice, and an arcaded cornice not infrequently crowns the structure. The openings at the top may be three or four in number on each face, and even the plan is sometimes octagonal or circular. The brick octagonal campanile of +S. Gottardo+ at Milan is one of the finest Lombard church towers. At Verona the brick tower on the Piazza dell’ Erbe and that of S. Zeno are conspicuous; but every important town of northern Italy possesses one or more examples of these structures dating from the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth century. Undoubtedly the three most noted bell-towers in Italy are those of Venice, Pisa, and Florence. The great +Campanile+ of +St. Mark+ at Venice, first begun in 874, carried higher in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, and finally completed in the sixteenth century with the marble belvedere and wooden spire so familiar in pictures of Venice, was formerly the highest of all church campaniles in Italy, measuring approximately 325 feet to the summit. But this superb historic monument, weakened by causes not yet at this writing fully understood, fell in sudden ruin on the 14th of July, 1902, to the great loss not only of Venice, but of the world of art, though fortunately without injuring the neighboring buildings on the Piazza and Piazzetta of St. Mark. Since then the campanile of S. Stefano, in the same city, has been demolished to forestall another like disaster. The +Leaning Tower+ of Pisa (see p. 160, Fig. 92) dates from 1174, and is unique in its plan and its exterior treatment with superposed arcades. Begun apparently as a leaning tower, it seems to have increased this lean to a dangerous point, by the settling of its foundations during construction, as its upper stages were made to deviate slightly towards the vertical from the inclination of the lower portion. It has always served rather as a watch-tower and belvedere than as a bell-tower. The +Campanile+ adjoining the Duomo at +Florence+ is described on p. 263 and illustrated in Fig. 154, and does not require further notice here. The black-and-white banded towers of Sienna, Lucca, and Pistoia, and the octagonal lanterns crowning those of Verona and Mantua, also referred to in the text on p. 264, need here only be mentioned again as illustrating the variety of treatment of these Italian towers.