THE BASILICA OF ST. PETER

THE BASILICA of St. PETER

A WORLD OF ART TREASURES TO GLORIFY THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

The  road that today connects Saint Peter's with the Lungotevere, the Via della Conciliazione, planned and opened during the Fascist era, strongly diminishes the emotion of the approach.

 

It is a road that absorbs, extinguishes and practically denies any feelings of pathos. But it was not always so. Piazza San Pietro was formerly entered from the "Spina dei Borghi"  and your hearth skipped a beat. there are forty-four thousand cubic metres of white travertine, 284 columns, 140 statues. 

The whole thing designed and completed by Gian Lorenzo Berniniin less than twenty years between 1656 and 1673. the patron, the Chigi Pope Alexander VII, had clear ideas. He wished to create, a stone embrace which, in his own words, welcomed Christians and also . The notion of the universal and ecumenical welcome had never before been given such an extraordinary architectural expression.  
 

 

If the dream of Gian Lorenzo Bernini was to, Pope Chigi gave him the chance to realize this dream, at the least in the part of Rome that leads to and includes the tombs of the Vicar of Christ and has at its centre the gigantic obelisk originally in the Circus of Caligola and that Domenico Fontana had re-erected in 1586.

To Bernini the sculptural effect was equally as interesting as a theatrical one. This is perfectly They are images understood when you analyse the sculptures adorning the apex of composition, the 140 statues that crown the piazza. They are images of male and female saints, virgins and martyrs, Doctors of Church and founders of holy orders. There is no overall and precise iconography.

 

They are the Heavenly Army of the Church Triunphant: high above the piazza, conducting a dialogue with the sky and clouds of Rome, changing the colour of their white travertine according to the time of day and the season, they look down vigilantly on the Christian folk gathered in front of the basilica of the prince of Apostles. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was interested in the overall effect.