A Historical Tour of St. Peter's Basilica

St. Peter's Basilica is the most imposing church on the planet. 613 feet down the nave and 460 feet across the transept, it covers nearly six acres and is standing room for more than 60,000 worshipers. The dome, 450 feet high, still dominates the Roman skyline. St. Peter's is, quite simply, the most impressive structure that Renaissance piety could imagine and Renaissance ingenuity could build. But it isn't just a Renaissance masterpiece. The basilica was built on the remains of early Christianity's greatest church and with materials taken from dozens of Roman ruins. This deeper history is still visible, if you know where to look. Welcome to the second episode of Virtual Vacations. As usual, I'm Dr. Garrett Ryan, and, as in the Vatican Museum's video, my goal is to explore an overlooked aspect of a famous place. In this case, the pre-Renaissance history of St. Peter's Basilica. Vatican City stands where it does because of the belief that the Apostle Peter was crucified and buried here 19 and a half centuries ago. During the heyday of ancient Rome, the Vatican was a sleepy suburb, notorious for its swarming mosquitoes and low-grade vineyards. The only point of interest in the entire area was the Circus of Nero, a track for chariot racing. Rome's main chariot drag was the Circus Maximus, on the other side of the Tiber. The Circus of Nero was a smaller establishment, used by the emperors for their private amusement and occasional spectacles. It was a typical Roman circus, long and narrow, with a barrier running down the center of the track. On the barrier stood an Egyptian obelisk, the same obelisk, as we'll see, that now stands in the center of St. Peter's Square. According to a tradition that dates back to at least the 2nd century, the Apostle Peter was crucified on the barrier of Nero's circus. According to that same tradition, he was buried just north of the circus, where tombs lined the road known as the Via Cornelia. In later years, this necropolis expanded, eventually engulfing the circus itself. The fame of Peter's tomb grew as well, and, sometime in the late 2nd century, a small monument was built on the site. This memorial, buried beneath a millennium and a half of embellishments, still stands at the heart of St. Peter's Basilica. The basilica itself was born in the early 4th century, soon after the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Never one to make small plans, Constantine decided that the tomb of the chief apostle ought to be venerated in a suitably impressive church. Building that church, however, wouldn't be easy, since Peter's tomb stood in the middle of a crowded cemetery, on the slopes of a steep hill. Undeterred, Constantine leveled the site by taking away part of the hillside, and dumping up to 40 feet of spoil over the cemetery. The church built on this terrace was over 350 feet long, and nearly 125 feet high at the gable. Rows of columns divided the interior into five aisles. The little tomb of Peter, now encased in marble, glittered at the end of the central nave. Over the ensuing centuries, the aisle was an atrium filled with chapels and tombs. To the medieval pilgrims who came by the hundreds of thousands to see the relics of the apostle, the basilica must have looked and felt like a museum of sacred history. But, by the end of the Middle Ages, the old basilica was showing its age. The upper parts of the walls leaned as far as five feet from the vertical. Debris fell from the ceiling during mass. Scurrying hordes of rats nested in the wooden rafters. Finally, at the beginning of the 16th century, the dynamic pope Julius II commissioned the architect Bramante to replace the ancient basilica. Construction took well over a century, and involved almost every famous name of the Roman Renaissance and Baroque, from Michelangelo to Bernini. Along the way, the design was changed many times, as architects waffled between centralized Greek cross plans and oblong Latin cross ones. For our purposes, it matters only that the new building incorporated massive quantities of ancient stone, both from the old basilica and from many Roman ruins. The rest of this video will showcase some of these ancient and early Christian relics. So, let's get started. As anyone who has been there knows, getting into St. Peter's is a hassle. Though the line isn't quite on par with the Vatican museums, it isn't unusual to wait for an hour, sandwiched between increasingly restive tour groups. Because the wait is so egregious, most visitors jump right in the line, and save their pictures of St. Peter's Square for later. But since we virtual vacationers have no need to worry about such things, we'll start in front of the church, at the obelisk. This obelisk originally stood in Alexandria, where a Roman governor of Egypt dedicated it to Augustus and Tiberius. In 37 AD, Caligula had it loaded onto a specially constructed ship, and brought across the Mediterranean to Rome. The barge that transported it, too large to be used for anything else, was scuttled and filled with concrete to serve as a breakwater in Rome's harbor. The obelisk, as mentioned earlier, was set up on the central barrier of Nero's Circus. There it remained for a millennium and a half, as the circus vanished and the basilica rose beside it, the only one of Rome's obelisks to never be toppled by an earthquake. It was incorporated into the pilgrimage circuit during the Middle Ages, when a belief arose that those who managed to squeeze through the narrow gap between the obelisk and its base would receive a special blessing. In 1586, midway through the construction of the new basilica, the fiercely energetic Pope Sixtus V decided that the obelisk should be moved from the side of the church to its front, where St. Peter's Square was taking shape. Although the distance was only about 800 feet, the move posed serious technical difficulties, since the obelisk weighed upward of 330 tons. But, after reading some ancient Roman texts, Domenico Fontana, the pope's favorite architect, tackled the job. The obelisk was encased in planks and connected to a network of ropes. On the day chosen for lowering the monolith, Fontana assembled 800 laborers and 140 cart horses, who manned and horsed 35 huge windlasses. Working in unison, they lifted the obelisk from its base and lowered it onto rollers. After being maneuvered to its current position, the obelisk was again attached to a network of windlasses. With a fanfare of trumpets, the men and horses began to push and pull. The only sound was the straining of ropes. Pope Sixtus had decreed the death penalty for anyone who distracted the workmen by talking and had a gala set up on St. Peter's Square to drive the message home. The obelisk began to inch upward. But, as it did, the ropes started to whine and smoke. The monolith wavered. At last, a sailor in the crowd, risking execution, shouted, Wet the ropes! This was done, and the rest of the operation went without a hitch. Ever since, the obelisk has stood as you see it, resting on the backs of four bronze lions. Magically bypassing the line, we enter the basilica's porch. There are five doors, each with a special significance. We're going to focus, however, on the central door, normally opened only on special occasions. The door itself is a 15th century masterpiece, salvaged from the old basilica. We're more interested, however, in the columns on either side. These are made of Greek marble and originally belonged to some great building project of the first or second century. Constantine's builders removed the columns from their original setting and set them up inside the basilica. At the beginning of the 17th century, when the last remains of the old basilica were demolished, they were rescued from the rubble and reused here. Now, at last, we step into the church. Just inside the central door, there's a porphyry disk set on the floor. As those of you who saw the Vatican Museum's video will recall, porphyry is a very special stone, found only in Egypt's eastern desert. Since the quarries from which it came were lost in late antiquity and only rediscovered in the 19th century, every piece of porphyry you see in medieval and renaissance buildings was salvaged from some ancient ruin. This particular bit was sawn from a column and may have come from Hadrian's mausoleum. Like the doors behind it, it was saved from the old basilica for two reasons. First, it's a very fetching shade of purple. Second, and more importantly, it marked the spot in the old basilica where the Pope crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor in the year 800, inaugurating an exciting new era in the medieval marriage of church and state. Standing at the disk and looking toward the altar, we're treated to a view of the full nave and all of its oversized goodness. To our right is the famous Pietà, the supreme masterpiece of Michelangelo's youth. Unfortunately, it resides behind bulletproof glass, which rather spoils the effect. Released in the attempt to take good pictures of it. Our next destination, in any case, is on the left. This is the baptismal font. The lid, as you can see, is pretty swanky. It was designed by Domenico Fontana, the same guy who moved the obelisk out front. We're interested, however, in the font itself. Like Charlemagne's disk, it's made of porphyry. This tells us two things. First, that the Romans quarried it. And second, since the porphyry quarries were owned by the emperors, that it was originally part of some imperial project. And so it was. Originally, the font was the lid of an emperor's tomb. We're not sure which emperor, but according to tradition, it covered the remains of the globe-trotting second century emperor, Hadrian. In 983, the lid was taken from Hadrian's mausoleum and reused in the tomb of the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto II, who was buried in the atrium of Old St. Peter's. When the atrium was demolished, nobody had much use for the emperor's marble coffin, which was dragged off and reused as a watering trough. This sort of thing was actually pretty common during the Renaissance. When the dome of St. Peter's was under construction, for example, the workmen used a medieval pope's tomb to mix their lime. The porphyry lid of Otto's tomb, however, was saved. The workers managed to drop it, breaking it into ten pieces. But it was stuck back together, turned upside down, and fashioned into the stylish font we see today. Next door to the font, we find the Presentation Chapel. The most eye-catching feature here is the crystal coffin under the altar, which contains all that was mortal of Pope Pius X. As at the front door, however, I urge you to swing your gaze up to the columns flanking the altar. Like their counterparts at the central door, these are Roman columns, reused first in Constantine's Basilica and then by the Renaissance builders of the current structure. You'll notice similar columns around almost every altar and chapel in the church. Continuing down the south aisle, we pass the marvelous bronze tomb of the Renaissance pope Innocent VIII, transferred here from the old Basilica. Just beyond it is an altar containing the relics of Gregory the Great, who defined the medieval papacy. Our destination, however, is the centerpiece of the whole Basilica, Bernini's magnificent Baldaccino. The Baldaccino, almost 100 feet tall, is the largest bronze structure ever created. The columns alone weigh over 80,000 pounds. Even more impressive than its scale is the way it creates a visual axis in the center of the great church, drawing every eye of the papal altar and the tomb of Peter beneath. Like almost everything else in the Basilica, the Baldaccino is recycled. Some of the metal in those great twisted columns came from the bronze beams of the Pantheon's porch, famously plundered by Pope Urban VIII. The papal altar itself is a huge block of marble taken from a Roman temple. In front of the Baldaccino, marble steps lead down to the recessed area known as the Confessio. This is the closest most visitors get to seeing Peter's tomb. Although everything visible today is 17th century, the bronze cupboard on the back wall conceals the niche of the Palia, a recess cut into the ancient monument above Peter's tomb. The stulls known as Palia are placed here every year before the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, when the Pope gives the garments to newly appointed archbishops as a way of illustrating the apostolic continuity of the church. Before leaving the area of the Baldaccino, check out the Gregorian Chapel on your right. The porphyry urn beneath the altar contains the bones of the great 4th century theologian Gregory of Nazianzus. The walls are sumptuously decorated with many kinds of marble. Much of this stone, as we know from contemporary documents, was stripped from the Mausoleum of Hadrian. Now, let's circle around the Baldaccino and take a look at the piers that support the dome. Each of the four piers contains a huge niche, which houses an oversized statue. Above each niche are logias, which each contain one of the basilica's most precious relics. Fragments of the True Cross, Veronica's Veil, Glance of Longinus, and the head of the Apostle Andrew. Let's focus on Saint Andrew. Andrew's head came into papal possession shortly after the fall of Constantinople, when a refugee Byzantine prince brought it over from Greece. Saint Andrew's statue shows him with the X-shaped cross on which he died. Crane your neck back, and squint at the logia above the statue. Like its counterparts in the other three niches, this logia is flanked by twisted marble columns. As you've probably guessed, these are ancient Roman. In the old basilica, twelve of these twisted columns supported the screen around Saint Peter's tomb. Medieval pilgrims thought the columns came from Greece, or even from the Temple in Jerusalem. The shape of these columns, by the way, inspired the great bronze pillars of Bernini's Bellicino. Moving on to the apse, we come to the awesomely Baroque Altar of the Chair of Peter. Like the Bellicino itself, this is a work of Bernini, and exhibits his trademark use of natural light to illuminate and animate. Our focus, however, is not on Bernini's wizardry, but on the gilt-encased chair in the center of the altarpiece. This contains the ancient wooden throne of Saint Peter. The throne itself is in pretty bad shape, and is seldom removed from its casing. In its present state, it dates to the 9th century, when the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles the Bald, gave it to the Pope. Parts of the chair are older, but historians think that the oldest wooden elements only go back to the 6th century or so. If you do visit the basilica, do what we cannot, and spend some time on the wonderful papal tombs in this corner of the building. My favorite is the over-the-top tomb of Alexander VII, Bernini's final masterpiece. Check out the bronze figure of death emerging with an hourglass from beneath the vivid drapery. The days of our lives are fleeting, and so is this tour, as we're approaching our final stop. This is the south transept, the area left of the Baldacchino. It features three altars, all flanked by ancient columns. The large fluted columns on either side of the central altar were plucked from the form of Trajan. There's a Roman sarcophagus beneath the altar itself, which contains relics of the apostles Simon and Jude. But the most interesting historical artifact in this part of the building is not visible. This part of St. Peter stands on the site of two circular chapels that were connected to the south side of the old basilica. One of these buildings, the Chapel of St. Petronilla, was originally the mausoleum of one of Rome's last imperial dynasties. Several of the tombs beneath it were rediscovered during the Renaissance. In 1458, a marble sarcophagus was found beneath the chapel floor. Within were two silver-plated coffins, each containing a body wrapped in cloth of gold. Sixty years later, as the chapel was being demolished to make way for the new basilica, more sarcophagi came to light. One of these, which had a body wrapped in golden cloth, may have belonged to an imperial prince. The final and most momentous discovery came in 1544. Near the foundations of the new south transeptor being laid, the grand sarcophagus of Maria, wife of the emperor Honorius, was uncovered. The empress was robed, veiled, and shrouded in cloth of gold. Two silver chests lay beside her, one filled with gold and crystal vessels, the other with jewelry and gems. Tantalizingly, the most important burial in the mausoleum, that of emperor Honorius himself, was never found. To the best of our knowledge, his sarcophagus still lies beneath the south transept of St. Peter's, the last undisturbed burial of a Roman emperor. Well, that about wraps up our quick survey of the ancient artifacts of St. Peter's. There is, of course, much more that can be said and seen. If you do visit the Vatican, be sure not to miss the grottos, which contain many interesting bits and pieces of the old basilica. The Vatican treasury also houses some fascinating artifacts, including the bronze ball that once crowned the obelisk in St. Peter's Square. If you'd like to read more about the basilica, you can find a short list of recommended books, and of course, all sorts of other fun stuff, on totenstone.com. My next video will be an historical walking tour of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. To be sure you don't miss it, feel free to subscribe. In the meantime, as always, thanks for watching.