inSPIREd Sunday

Sally and Beth host inSPIREd Sunday!


May 2004 - Rome Italy

I am digging way back in my archives. I need to go church searching.

I will show shots from outside St. Peter's Basilica.

What a glorious day!

Designed principally by Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Carlo Maderno and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, St. Peter's is the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture and the largest church in the world. While it is neither the mother church of the Catholic Church nor the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome, St. Peter's is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic shrines. It has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world" and as "the greatest of all churches of Christendom".

The top of the facade of St. Peter's Basilica has two clocks and several sculptures. The clocks were created to replace Bernini's bell towers which had to be torn down due to insufficient support. The left clock shows Rome time, the one of the right shows European mean time.The statues are Christ the Redeemer, St. John the Baptist and 11 Apostles. From the left: St. Thadeus, St. Matthew, St. Philip, St. Thomas, St. James the Greater, St. John the Baptist, The Redeemer, St. Andrew, St. John the Evangelist, St. James the Lesser, St. Bartholomew, St. Simeon, and St. Matthias.

From the steps of St. Peter.

St. Peter's Square is bordered on two sides by semi-circular colonnades which, according to Bernini, symbolize the stretched arms of the church embracing the world. The colonnades were built in 1660 and consist of four rows of columns with in total 284 Doric columns and 88 pilasters.

Those columns!

AHA a nun to demonstrate the sheer size of these columns.

My favourite!

A panoramic. 

Taken from the Borghese Gardens, a distance away.

Information gathered from Wikipedia.