St. Peter Basilica
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St. Peter's Basilica is one of the biggest buildings of the world: it is 218 meters long and beyond 130 meters high, according to the tradition it was built on the tomb of the Apostle Peter, executed in the year 60 A.D.
Today it is the center of Catholicism and is able to receive 20,000 faithful; its construction began in the year 315, but after more than a millenium the building was restored and Pope Julius II decided to built a new cathedral. A lot of architects attended to the huge plan, among which Bramante, Raffaello and Michelangelo, who designed the dome.
The immense inner space is divided in three naves: the marble pavement is refined, but in the church there are 10.000 square meters of mosaics that are the coffer that encloses some of more celebrated works of art. In the first chapel to right is located the famous Pietà by Michelangelo: the marble statue, today sheltered behind a crystal, after the damages it endured in 1972, when was hit with a hammer by a fool, makes a deep impression for the harmony and the whiteness, for the beauty and the naturalness of the faces and the bodies of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
Among the artists who worked in the church, we remember Bernini, who made the monument to Pope Alexander VII and the tomb of Pope Urban VIII, but above all the huge Canopy of Saint Peter, to mark the tomb of the saint.
From the church you can reach the dome, in order to admire the inner mosaics, and then exit on the roof of the basilica, to enjoy the magnificebt panorama of Rome, St.Peter's Square and, on the back, the Vatican Gardens. Under the church, moreover, there are the Grotte Vaticane (Vatican's Caves), a real underground church, with niches, corridors and chapel were the Popes are buried; underground, coinciding with the main altar of the church, there is the tomb of the Apostle Peter, the first roman Pope.
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