Saint Peter's Square

The center of Christianity is a huge place harmoniously open to the heavens. A perfect ellipse surrounded by the magnificent colonnade by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was Alexander VII's favorite architect, the pope who wanted the city of Rome worthy of its role as universal capital of the Church.

Bernini made a number of fundamental changes until a few days before the first stone was laid, defining the colonnade as we see it today.

The colonnade contains two hundred and eighty four Doric pillars arranged in four rows with a passage in the middle for carriage. One hundred and forty statues of saints and martyrs surmounted the colonnade.