Saint Peter's Square — square
Diliff · CC BY-SA 3.0

Saint Peter's Square

Piazza San Pietro

  • 2 min read
  • 41.902° N 12.457° E

Interesting facts

  • Two marble discs marked "Centro del colonnato" lie between the obelisk and the fountains; from either one, the four rows of columns line up and appear as a single row.
  • Bernini's colonnades hold roughly 280 columns and 88 pilasters, crowned by 140 larger-than-life statues of saints.
  • Moving the obelisk about 260 metres in 1586 took thirteen months of preparation, then hundreds of men, well over a hundred horses and dozens of winches in a single day.
  • According to a popular story, a sailor named Benedetto Bresca saved the raising of the obelisk by shouting "Water on the ropes!" just as the strained ropes were about to give way.
  • It was the first of Rome's ancient obelisks to be moved in modern times, and its success led Domenico Fontana to be hired to move three more.
  • The bronze globe that once topped the obelisk, long believed to hold Caesar's ashes, was given to the city and is now kept in the Palazzo dei Conservatori.
  • Under the Lateran Treaty, Italian police handle crowd control in the square, though it is Vatican territory, and withdraw behind the colonnades for papal ceremonies.
  • The obelisk rests on four bronze lions, and Bernini crowned it with the heraldic arms of his patron, Pope Alexander VII Chigi.
  • Visitors once reached the square through narrow medieval streets until Mussolini began demolishing the Borgo quarter's central block in 1936 to open Via della Conciliazione.

Why it is worth it

St. Peter's Square is the great forecourt of St. Peter's Basilica, and one of the most successful pieces of urban theatre ever made. Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed it between 1667 and 1676 for Pope Alexander VII, with a simple brief: as many people as possible should be able to see the pope give his blessing, from the basilica facade or from a window of the Vatican Palace. His answer was a vast oval embraced by two curving colonnades, four columns deep, which in Bernini's own image are the motherly arms of the Church gathering in the faithful. He chose the plain Tuscan order so as not to compete with Carlo Maderno's facade, but used it on a colossal scale, and a crowd of statues of saints lines the balustrade above.

The oval connects to the basilica through a trapezoidal space whose sides draw closer toward the church. That shape was largely forced on Bernini by the buildings already there, yet it has been praised ever since as a masterstroke, subtly changing the perspective for anyone walking out of the basilica. Bernini also balanced the square: a granite fountain by Maderno of 1613 already stood on one side, and in 1675 he added a matching one on the other, making the two fountains appear as the foci of the oval.

At the centre stands the Vatican obelisk, an uninscribed shaft of red Egyptian granite 25.5 metres tall, 41 metres with its base and cross. It was first raised at Heliopolis, taken by Augustus to Alexandria and brought to Rome by Caligula for the Circus of Nero. It is the only obelisk in Rome never to have fallen since antiquity, and its re-erection here in 1586 by Domenico Fontana was an engineering feat celebrated in engravings. Medieval Romans believed the ball on top held the ashes of Julius Caesar. Radiating lines of travertine cross the paving, and in 1817 markers were set to show where the obelisk's noon shadow falls as the sun enters each sign of the zodiac, turning it into a giant sundial.

Getting there

The square lies at the edge of Vatican City, at the end of Via della Conciliazione, which leads from the Tiber at Castel Sant'Angelo. Ciampino Airport (CIA) is about 16 km away.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Vatican City 8The Most Beautiful Squares Seen on Screen 5The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments Seen on Screen 19The Most Beautiful Squares 25The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173The Most Beautiful Film Locations 221

From the encyclopaedia

St. Peter's Square is a large plaza located directly in front of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, the papal enclave in Rome, directly west of the neighborhood (rione) of Borgo. Both the square and the basilica are named after Saint Peter, an apostle of Jesus whom Catholics consider the first pope.

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