St. Peter's Basilica ★★★

St. Peter's Basilica (Basilica di San Pietro) in Rome: Motherchurch of Christendom

St. Peter's is one of the holiest basilicas in the Catholic faith, the pulpit for a parish priest we call the pope, one of the grandest creations of Rome's Renaissance and baroque eras, and the largest church in Europe.

(It was biggest church in the world until an ugly barn of a place was recently completed in Africa.)

The Piazza San Pietro

You approach the church through the embracing arms of Bernini's oval colonnade, arranged in four rows and topped with 96 statues of saints, which encompasses Piazza San Pietro.

Actually, this "oval" is a perfect ellipse—and I can prove it.

Bernini's engineering was spot-on. You can even see his perfect perspective trick if you stand in the proper spot.

Find one of this oval piazza's foci, marked by round marble plaques set into the ground between the central ancient Egyptian obelisk and the flanking fountains to either side.

Keep an eye on the nearest colonnade as you approach the focus. When you reach the marble disc, the four-deep rows of columns of that colonnade will line up perfectly and suddenly appear to consists of only a single, curving row.

Neat.

Inside St. Peter's

The church itself takes at least an hour to see—not because they are too many specific sights; it just takes that long to walk down to one end of it and back.

St. Peter's sheer dimensions are staggering: 614 feet long, 145 feet high in the aisle soaring to 385 feet inside Michelangelo's dome (which is itself 137 feet across).

Mocking bronze plaques set in the floor of the central nave mark just how short the world's other great cathedrals come up.

However, since everything is done to scale, its immensise size is not always immediately apparent. I mean, it certainly looks big, but not mind-boggling big.

Look more closely, though.

Fun fact
St. Peter's is not the cathedral of Rome. The pope's true title is Bishop of Rome, and as such his official home church—and Rome's cathedral—is actually San Giovanni in Laterano.

First of all, notice the people milling around the baldacchino, that fancy twisty-clumned canopy over the main altar. Notice how they look like ants? Guess what? They're still only about two-thirds of the way to the other end of the basilica.

Here's an even better measuring stick. Check out those cherubs frolicking around the bathtub-sized holy water stoups. They really do appear to be baby-sized—until you get up close to them and realize they would be around six feet tall if they were standing next to you.

The major sights inside, starting on the right

Admire Michelangelo's youthful masterpiece Pietà in the first chapel on the right, sculpted at the age of 25.

The beauty and unearthly grace of sweet-faced Mary and her dead son, Jesus, led some critics of the day to claim the 25-year-old Florentine sculptor could never have carved such a work himself.

An indignant Michelangelo returned to the statue and did something he never did before or after: He signed it, chiseling his name unmistakably right across the Virgin's sash.

Notice how some of the details seem exactingly perfect and yet are exaggerated for effect. For example, the Virgin's lap is mountainously large in order to support the body of a full-grown man without seeming unbelievable.

The Pietà has been behind bulletproof since 1972 when a crazed geologist attacked it with a hammer, hacking off Mary's nose and fingers (since repaired) while screaming, "I am Jesus Christ!"

If the Cappella di San Sebastiano—one chapel up from the Pietà—looks a little busy, it is because the remains of the newly-minted St. John Paul II are buried directly underneath. (You can see the former pope's actual tomb in the Papal Crypt.)

Around the High Altar

At the end of the left asile, the first major pier supporintg the dome serves as a backdrop for a late 13th century bronze statue St. Peter by Arnolfo di Cambio.

This architect of Florence's Gothic palazzi was also an underrated sculptor, and his greatest work in Rome does double duty as a piece of art and a holy good luck talisman for the faithful—you'll often see a line of people sidling up to touch or kiss his outstretched foot, by now worn to a shiny nub.

The four great piers that support the dome each preserve a major-league holy relic—the statues in the 30-foot-high niches give you clue as to what relic is in each:

• St. Longinus (sculpted, incidentally, by Bernini) - Holding the spear that Longinus, a Roman soldier (who later converted), used to pierce Jesus's side when he was on the cross, and is therefore (supposedly) stained the the Lord's blood.
• St. Helena - Holding the True Cross and the nails used to secure Jesus to it. (Helena brought back loads of primo relics like these—including Pontius Pilate's entire staircase—though,all due respect to the devout, it should be pointed out that there really are enough splinters of the "True Cross" in church reliquaries across Europe to reforst half of Italy.)
• St. Veronica - Holding aloft the veil, or handkerchief, she used to wipe Jesus's face as he struggled along the road to Golgotha with the Cross. It is said to retain a miraculous imprint of Christ's face.
• St. Andrew - Holding the famous X-shaped cross upon which he was crucified. This pier used to contain St. Andrew's skull—sent here so it could rest near the bones of his real-lfie brother, Simon (a.k.a. St. Peter). However, in 1966 the pope gave the skull as a gift to the church of St. Andrew of Patras, near the site where Andrew was martyred, to be reuinted with his little finger. (Most of the rest of Andrew is in the Duomo of Amalfi.)

Stand under the 96-foot-high baroque confectioner's-piece baldacchino (altar canopy) with its twisting columns cast by Bernini in 1524 using bronze revetments removed from the Pantheon. St. Peter's tomb is directly beneath it.

Behind the altar, against the back wall of the apse, is a massive confecionary of gold and bronze and filtered sunlight called the Cathedra Petri, the Throne of Peter. Encased at the center of the great bronze throne is the simple wooden seat said to have been used by St. Peter hismelf—and subsequent popes for 16 centuries—as his cathedra, or bishop's chair. (A somewhat more believable chruch tradition states that it was a a gift from Charles the Bold to Pope John VIII in 875. Other analysis actually dates it closer to the 12th century.)

Chigi Pope Alexander VII decided to retire the deteriorating relic and had Bernini whip up this overwrought setting for it, a mountain of gilded bronze rising to the Gloria, a river of gold and cherubs flowing from golden sunrays emanating from a series of yellow alabaster discs, shaved thin to let through the natural sunlight and set with a single dove of the Holy Spirit at its center.

It's impressive, but all a bit much.

Much cooler is the nearby tomb for Pope Alexander VII, also by Bernini, with the pious pope kneeling hands folded and gazed at adoringly by the Virtues he most embodied (Truth, Charity, Prudence, and Justice), atop a green marble pedestal that rests atop hillock of folded red jaspar drapery... from which is emerging a golded bronze skeleton holding aloft an hourglass.

This is called a memento mori, Latin for: "Remember: You, too, will die"—and is meant to remind popes and other wordly hot-shots to be humble, but really just comes off as part creepy, part wicked-cool.

The Treasury of St. Peter's

The small Treasury museum (entrance just before the left transept) contains the usual embroidered vestments, gilded chalices, and other bejeweled accoutrements of the faith.

Top billing in its collections goes to a marble ciborium carved by Donatello, and the enormous bronze slab tomb of Pope Sixtus IV, cast by early Renaissance master Antonio del Pollaiuolo in 1493.

it's a true Humanist-era work, marrying sacred and secular aspirations. Around its edges are relief panels personifying the seven virtues—Faith, Prudence, etc.—and others depicting scholarly disciplines—Astrology, Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Music, Geometry, Arithmetic, Philosophy, Theology, and Perspective.

The Papal Crypt below St. Peter's

Note that there are two burial areas underneath San Pietro, and many people get them confused. The only one you can get into from the church itself on a regular admission is the Papal Crypt, or Vatican Grottoes. (The other—the more ancient Scavi di San Pietro necropolis with St. Peter's Red Wall—is only accesible on speical, booked-ahead guided tours.)

Anyone who shows up at the pier to the right of and behind the main altar can walk down a short staircase into the first burial level, usually called the crypt or "Vatican Grottoes." (Note: sometimes they use the entrance by the rear left pier.)

In the low-ceilinged space, art fans get to see 15th-century bronze plaques on the lives of Sts. Peter and Paul by Antonio del Pollaiuolo and remaining bits of Constantine’s original basilica.

But the star attractions are the tomb chapels of some 91 popes—including St. John Paul II. However, there are a few tombs here that are not those of popes—and are a bit surprising. In the Vatican crypt rest in peace the remains of some rather famous exlied European royalty.

Queen Christina of Sweden renounced her throne so she could convert to Catholicism and lived out much of her life here in Rome (in the Palazzo Corsini).

There are also the simple tombs of the would-be Jacobite kings, James Francis Edward, Prince of Wales—"The Old Pretender," son of the deposed King James II of England/James VII of Scotland—and his sons, Bonnie Prince Charlie (more formally: Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart), and Henry Benedict Stuart.

Visiting the crypt is free, but it's also a one-way experience—you end up exiting into a narrow space between the basilica and Vatican walls where your only choices are to get in line to get up the dome (see below) or head back out into the piazza, so save the crypt for when you're done with the interior of St Peter's.

Note that the Tombs of the Popes close one hour before the St. Peter's itself.

» Note: These are not the famous Scavi di San Pietro sub-crypt, the "St. Peter's Excavations" that unearthed an ancient necropolis directly beneath the basilica—supposedly containing the "Red Wall" behind which St. Peter's bones were buried—which you can visit only by a guided tour arranged well ahead of time. » more

Getting up on the roof of St. Peter's

You must pay to take the elevator then climb (320 steps) to the top of St. Peter's dome—but it's worth it. (You can save a couple of euros by opting to climb the entire way: 551 stairs.)

Michelangelo himself designed this dome to loft 135m (450 ft.) above the ground at its top and stretch 42m (139 ft.) in diameter.

In deference to the Pantheon, Michelangelo made his dome 1.5m (5 ft.) shorter across, saying "I could build one bigger, but not more beautiful, than that of the Pantheon."

Carlo Maderno later added the dome-top lantern, which today affords visitors a fantastic and dizzying city panorama.

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