Piazza San Pietro

Gian Lorenzo Bernini laid out the square for Pope Alexander VII from 1656, framing an oval 240 metres across with colonnades four columns deep, 140 over-lifesize saints along their cornices. At the centre stands a red granite obelisk 25.5 metres tall, cut in Egypt, brought to Rome by Caligula in AD 37 and moved here in 1586. It is the only obelisk in the city never to have fallen.

Two Arms

Alexander VII commissioned the scheme in 1656 & the work took until 1667. Bernini set an oval about 240 metres across between two curved colonnades, each four ranks deep in plain Tuscan columns: 284 columns with 88 pilasters, carrying 140 statues of saints along the cornice, every figure over three metres tall and cut by his workshop rather than by him. He described the plan as the arms of the church reaching out to embrace those who enter. The order is deliberately the simplest one available, so that nothing competes with the basilica at the head of the space.

The Trick in the Paving

Two round marble discs are set in the pavement between the obelisk & each fountain, marking the foci of the ellipse. Stand on one, look at the nearer colonnade & the four rows of columns line up exactly: the forest collapses into a single file. It is a piece of applied geometry that turns a walk across the square into a demonstration. The same logic governs the whole design, which widens where a crowd needs room & narrows toward the steps so that a figure on the basilica balcony can be seen from anywhere in it.

Moving the Obelisk

The red granite obelisk at the centre is 25.5 metres of Egyptian stone, quarried without inscriptions & shipped to Rome by Caligula in AD 37 for his circus on this hill. It is the only obelisk in Rome never to have fallen. In 1586 Sixtus V had Domenico Fontana drag it several hundred metres to its present spot, a job that took hundreds of men, dozens of horses and an elaborate cradle of winches. The story Romans tell is that the ropes began to smoke, silence having been ordered on pain of death, until a sailor shouted for water on them.

Arriving

Bernini meant the square to ambush you. Until the 1930s the approach ran through the cramped lanes of the Spina di Borgo, so the oval opened without warning. Mussolini had that quarter demolished for Via della Conciliazione, a broad avenue that shows the dome from half a kilometre away & spends the surprise in advance. The square still works: sound changes under the colonnades, the wind drops & on a Wednesday morning the papal audience fills the open ground with tens of thousands of people in folding chairs. Maderno's fountain of 1613 & its twin of 1677 run throughout.

Knowing

The square is open & free at all hours; the basilica beyond it has a dress code enforced at the security line, meaning covered shoulders & knees, with queues shortest early. The obelisk doubles as the gnomon of a sundial, with marble markers set in the paving to catch its shadow at the solstices. A boundary line of travertine in the pavement marks where Italy ends & Vatican City begins, which is the only frontier in Europe you cross without noticing.

Country

Italy

Region

Roma

Coordinates

41°54′08″N 12°27′24″E

Filmed here

Spectre (2015)

More on this place

Film & TV · James Bond Spectre

Spectre took the rare step of running a car chase through St Peter's Square, with Bond's Aston Martin DB10 and Hinx's Jaguar C-X75 speeding across the piazza and diving down the street to the right of Bernini's colonnade on their way to the Tiber. The cars come in from Via S. Pio X to the south and carry straight on into Via della Conciliazione, which makes the square a hinge in the chase route rather than a backdrop. Few films have put vehicles at speed inside the colonnade's embrace.

All Spectre filming locations →