#St Peter’s Basilica as viewed from the Villa Borghese |
The façade of St Peter’s Basilica, featuring the Loggia della Benedizione from
where the Pope delivers blessings
THE THOUGH IT IS THE
MOST SACRED church in the Catholic world, on this day there is a boisterous
confusion of tongues in the grand forecourt of St Peter’s Basilica that makes
it more reminiscent of the Tower of Babel. A cacophony of excited chatter and
chanted prayers emanates from the gathered crowd, mixing with the sweet strains
of Ave Maria filtering out of the Basilica. A group of nuns from Madagascar
alternate between praying and gleefully taking photos in front of the grand
façade. A Spanish priest, dressed soberly in dog collar and white shirt, talks
animatedly with his mother and sister as they approach the huge entrance,
barely able to suppress his excitement.
The Basilica is the most magnificent church in a city that
does magnificent churches like no other. It was a combined effort by Rome’s
most legendary 16th-century architects. Donato Bramante, one of the
pioneers of Renaissance architecture, came up with the blueprint around 1503,
and Raphael reworked it before Michelangelo took over in 1547 and added his
soaring Florentine-inspired dome.
Inside, the Basilica is packed with statues of popes, saints
and cherubs peering out from every surface. The most famous is tucked in a
corner near the entrance, behind a formidable barrier of bulletproof glass. It
is Michelangelo’s sublime Pieta, a statue of the Virgin Mary cradling the
crucified body of her son. Its exquisitely sinuous marble form was carved when
the artist was just 25 and, while today it’s considered one of the world’s
finest sculptures, it was criticized at the time for portraying Mary as a young
woman instead of middle-aged, as she would have been at the time of Jesus’s
death. Michelangelo explained that he had carved her tender features while
thinking of his own mother, who had died when he was just six years old.
The Pieta is a far cry from another statue of Mary near the
altar, which would look more at home in a Tim Burton movie than a church. Here,
she stands atop a flowing wave of red and white marble, and emerging from
beneath her is the winged skeleton of Death, holding aloft an hourglass: a
terrifying memento mori hidden in this setting of religious beauty.
The Pope makes an appearance on Sundays and Wednesdays at
noon, if he’s in town-which means that Wednesday morning are the best time to
visit the Sistine Chapel. If you secretly tag along with a tour group, you can
slip into the Basilica from the Sistine Chapel without having to queue again.
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