Saint Peter’s Square

This is a dream come true for me. I have always dreamt of going to Saint Peter’s Basilica and I am right at the doorsteps. We were still busy taking photos of the the massive square which is outside the basilica. This is Saint Peter’s Square or Piazza San Pietro. I would admit that this place feels more like a palace but this was how it was built. It was probably the thinking that the the head of the Catholic church should be staying in a very impressive location. Saint Peter’s Basilica can be considered the palace and the square is the town square. However, how this was implemented was impressive.

It seems that the church already was there before the square. Normally, it would have been easier to just make a square right in front of the basilica but there were already structures to the right of the basilica so the arms of columns was conceived to essentially hide the existing structures. The facade of the basilica already had massive columns so it may look just like an extension of the basilica. With the size of the columns, it seemed to be very effective in hiding the other structures behind it. The square itself is massive and can fit a large number of people, probably up to a million people right there. That is already larger than the population of the Vatican. Fortunately, this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often else the Vatican and Rome will be choked with the huge number of pilgrims. There are two fountains here in the elliptical square with an obelisk in the middle. I thought the obelisk was a strange thing to put here in the most Catholic of places.

[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/SaintPeter’sSquare.kmz} zoom=19]