St Peter's Basilica: The Dome, the Pietà and the Tomb
Why is it significant?
Stand at the foot of the steps and let the facade overwhelm you: more than a hundred metres wide, giant columns, the name of Pope Paul the Fifth Borghese carved across the top, and statues of Christ, John the Baptist and the apostles lined up along the roof.
Key Facts
| Place | St Peter's Basilica: The Dome, the Pietà and the Tomb |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza San Pietro, 00120 Città del Vaticano |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.90220, 12.45390 |
| Part of Walk | Pilgrims, Popes and Swiss Guards: Rome's Vatican and the Medieval Borgo |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand at the foot of the steps and let the facade overwhelm you: more than a hundred metres wide, giant columns, the name of Pope Paul the Fifth Borghese carved across the top, and statues of Christ, John the Baptist and the apostles lined up along the roof. Behind it, only half visible from this close, rises Michelangelo's dome.
The old basilica built by Constantine in the fourth century stood here for more than eleven hundred years, until in 1506 Pope Julius the Second laid the first stone of a new one. It took a hundred and twenty years, some twenty popes and a parade of geniuses: Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Maderno, Bernini. It was consecrated in 1626. And the money? The sale of indulgences to pay for it helped provoke Martin Luther's protest in 1517. The most magnificent church in Christendom helped split Christendom in two.
Michelangelo took charge of the building in 1547, past seventy, and refused any salary, working, he said, for the love of God. He did not live to see the dome closed; Giacomo della Porta completed it in 1590. From the pavement to the top of the cross it rises about 136 metres. Inside, in the first chapel on the right, is the Pietà he carved in his early twenties. It is the only work he ever signed: Vasari tells us he overheard visitors crediting it to another sculptor, and carved his name across the Virgin's sash.
In 1972 a man attacked the Pietà with a hammer, breaking the Virgin's arm and nose; since its restoration it has stood behind glass. And beneath the high altar, under Bernini's bronze canopy, lies the reason for all of this. Excavations in the 1940s uncovered a Roman cemetery beneath the basilica and a modest shrine that the Church identifies as the tomb of Saint Peter.
Whatever you believe, this is a building raised over a grave, and every stone of it leans towards that one spot. Come back down the steps and walk to the right, along the northern arm of the colonnade, to a gate guarded by soldiers who have kept watch here for five hundred years.