St Peter's Basilica

Saint Peter's square is the greatest piazza in Rome. In Roman time it was the place where the Circus of Nero stood, and where in 65 was crucified St. Peter. After 250 years he was buried in the point where Costantine built the first Basilica in 326. Notice that up to that epoch Rome was of pagan faith and the bodies were buried in the catacombs outside the walls of the city, and only after the edict of Milan in 313 Costantine and Licinius allowed the Christians to freely observe their religion and to bury the bodies inside the city boundaries: that's why St. Peter was buried in the homonymous area more than 250 years later.

St.Peter's Basilica belongs to the Vatican City, the smallest State of the world, and it is independent from February 11 th 1929, date in which was resolved the Roman Question, with the ratification of the Lateran Treaty, between the Church and the Italian State.

The Vatican (included St. Peter Basilica) was the papal residence only since 1377 (from 1309 to 1377 it was Avignon) and until then had been St. John in Lateran. A succession of 266 Popes (the last was John Paul II), many of which beatified.

The construction of a new structure went on through obstacles of every kind. During the 77 years of the papacy in Avignon the basilica was abandoned to itself and its restoration was impossible. In 1447 Pope Nicolas V decided to rebuild it submitting the project to Rossellino, but the jobs stopped with the death of the Pope. The jobs of the new Basilica started under Julius II with Bramante in 1506 and they took 120 years to complete, the 18th of November 1626, same date of the beginning of the old one by Constantine.

In 1546, Pope Paul III called Michelangelo Buonarroti to work on the site: at his death, 18th February of 1564, the design of the Basilica had been conceived to Greek cross and it assumed the form of Latin cross (design of the actual Basilica) with Carlo Maderno. Only the drum of the dome had been made and the rest of the job was finished by Giacomo Della Porta and Domenico Fontana (1588-1589).

The Colonnade is the most beautiful masterpiece of Gianlorenzo Bernini with its 140 statues of saints. The obelisk of St.Peter's square comes from the Circus of Nero and was set in the square by Sixtus V (1585-1590). Its two fountains are of Maderno (1613) to the right side looking at the facade and of Carlo Fontana (1675) to the left side.

Maderno had built the facade since 1607 to 1614 and his name is enrolled in the structure. In the portico it is the famous one "mosaic of the Navicella" by Giotto (1300). On the facade there are 5 doors: the Door of the Death of Manzù (1952-1964), the Bronze Door (Filarete), the Holy Door (where the Pope kneels every Holy Year in the Christmas day and hits three times the door to enter), the Door of the Good and the Evil and the Door of the Sacraments. To the entry there is a porphiry red disk where Charlemagne was crowned king in the Christmas day of the year 800 from Pope Leo III.

The dimensions of the Basilica, engraved in the floor, are impressive: 211,50 meters (including portico), 186,30 meters (without portico), 44 meters high and the dome is 136 meters high. The Canopy that covers the Major Altar, made by Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1633, is 29 meters high and has been done with the bronze of the ceiling of the Pantheon under commission of Pope Urban VIII Barberini.

Under the Major Altar we can see the grave of St. Peter, but the glorification of that humble fisherman is the stately dome that raises in the sky.