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Vatican City-State

Sights of Vatican

Vatican is one of the richest states of the world: for centuries here a lot of pieces of art by the most famous artists have been accumulating as well as a library of manuscripts of the Middle Ages and the epoch of Renaissance and other masterpieces of architecture. To see all that one has to come here more than once and stay longer than one day

Saint Peter’s Square (Piazza San Pietro) is the center of Vatican and was built for Pope Alexander VII (1656 – 1667). The size of the square is impressive – a huge ellipse, the biggest diameter of which is 240 meters – as well as its lay-out designed by a genius Lorenzo Bernini who with the help of monumental side colonnades gave the square a special symbolic significance. The square has the shape of a jug: its neck looks on St. Peter’s Basilica while its bottom is an exit to Rome. An optical effect that can be experienced while simultaneous overseeing of the colonnade consisting of 284 columns of Tuscan and Doric order, four columns deep, is interesting: if one is standing in the center (near the fountain), all the columns stand on the same line.

Over entablature there are 140 huge statues of the saints rising. Here there’s also the emblem of Pope Alexander VII, and in the center of the square (at the crossing of two axis of the ellipse) there’s an obelisk surrounded by two fountains. Having received in the Middle Ages the name “Needle,” the obelisk was brought to Rome from Heliopolis by Emperor Caligula; Nero set it in his circus the place of which is now occupied by St. Peter’s Basilica. In different periods of restorations and redesigns of the square “the needle” stood beside the Basilica, and only in 1586 it was established in the center of the square by architect Dominica Fontana who used a complicated system of lifting equipment for this purpose. Another architect, Carlo Fontana, who also participated in the square’s reconstruction, was the author of the design of the left fountain (1677), a twin of the right fountain which had been built half a century before that by architect Carlo Maderna. Interesting information concerning the obelisk: it allegedly was a place where the ashes of Emperor Julius Cesar were kept in the Middle Ages, and also a place where right until recent times a fragment of the authentic Holy Cross was kept.

St. Peter’s Basilica will hardly leave anybody emotionless: it is the biggest Catholic cathedral in Europe occupying a square of 22,067 sq. meters and reaching a height of 189 meters (around 60,000 people can be here at the same time). It is crowned by a magnificent dome, the diameter of which is 43 meters built by Michelangelo’s design from which one can enjoy a very good view of the Eternal city. The Basilica owes its location and spiritual heritage to the apostle Peter, the first Pope. It is believed that after his crucifixion he was buried nearby in the Emperor’s gardens in 64 or 67 A.D.

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