In the exact place where Saint Peter had been killed and buried, i.e. in the place where Nero’s Circus was, now rises the most important Catholic church in the whole world: Saint Peter’s Basilica. The building of the first basilica, actually the one that we can admire now was completed in 1626 some 1300 years after the former church’s first consecration, was built in the IV century under the Emperor Costantino. The building took place over the ruins of the Circus of Nero that, in the years when Christians were considered a sect and therefore persecuted, became a necropolis.
At the beginning of the XV century, since the former Basilica was visibly ruined, Pope Nicolò V, asked to Bernardo Rossellino to build a new church. Saint Peter’s construction site remained open for so many centuries and so many architects worked at the construction of the new Saint Peter’s Basilica, the main ones being Bramante and Michelangelo, that now in Rome, if something goes on forever they call it “Saint Peter’s Factory” (La Fabbrica di San Pietro).
Bramante conceived the huge central part, with a Greek cross shape, whose transept was held up by four pillars. Michelangelo designed the dome and the impressing façade, even though the latter was rearranged and finished by Carlo Maderno.
Saint Peter’s Basilica is a marvellous church where tourists and pilgrims from all over the world came to admire ancient treasures and pieces of art. It is huge, just think about the fact that it’s wide as four football fields placed one after the other and it is as tall as a thirteen stories building.
