In the 1st century AD, Vatican Hill was the site of Caligula's circus, a chariot-racing stadium six hundred yards long. Some years later Nero had hundreds of Christians martyred here, many being thrown to the wild animals as part of the entertainment. St. Peter the Apostle was one of the first Christians to be rounded up by Nero's soldiers as the leader of the Christian community in Rome and crucified here. The Church rises on the spot where St Peter was buried and his bones - there is no way to detect if these are actually the bones of St. Peter - are housed in the Basilica. All Popes are buried here, St. Peter considered by many to be the first Pope.

In the 4th century AD, after years of Christian persecution, the first Christian Emperor Constantine, built a splendid basilica above the tomb of Peter on the slope of the Vatican hill.

The current altar which sits beneath Bernini’s Baldacchino and Michelangelo’s dome, is directly above the marble box Constantine built over the original 1st century altar. The Basilica was demolished and rebuilt throughout the centuries until 1500. It was then in such a state of disrepair that Pope Julius II decided to replace it with a new and more magnificent structure. The current Basilica was started in 1506 and completed in 1626, and was built over the Constantinian basilica. The greatest architects of the period were involved in its construction and decoration: Bramante, Sangallo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Maderno, Della Porta, Bernini, Fontana.

In 1546, at the age of 72, Michelangelo was obliged to undertake the building of the present Basilica by Pope Paul III. His imposing dome – the world’s largest - crowns this most impressive church on earth. The dome was completed after his death by della Porta and Fontana. When Michaelangelo died, the construction of the Greek Cross section surrounding the Papal altar and the tomb of Peter had been completed

In the beginning of the 1600's, Pope Paul V decided that the Greek Cross design was too small and required his architect, Maderno, to pull down the front wall of Michelangelo's building and extend the eastern end of the Basilica to form a Latin Cross which could hold more people. That was completed in 1626, and in the following 30 years Bernini added the Colonnade, topped with statues of 140 saints, and an enfolding ellipse piazza which can hold 300,000 people.

In the center of the St. Peter’s Square stands an obelisque brought to Rome by Caligula.

The Basilica itself houses remarkable works of art such as Michelangelo’s Pietà, sculpted from a single block of marble when he was only 24 years old; Bernini’s Baldacchino canopy above the main altar, which used bronze taken from the Pantheon, and the bronze statue of St. Peter by Arnolfo di Cambio. Also there is the tomb of Clement XIII by Canova and the mosaic of the Navicella by Giotto, located above the middle entrance to the Portico.

The Vatican Museums and their immense wealth of art offer an extraordinary experience in which the relevance of the works on display is heightened by the splendor of the structures in which they are displayed. The popes were among the first sovereigns who opened art collections to the public to promote knowledge of art history and culture. The Museums originated as a group of Greek sculptures collected by Pope Julius II (1503-1513) -the first being the famous Apollo Belvedere, which is actually a Roman copy of a Greek original. In 1506 it was joined by the Laocoön. (You can see both these famous statues in the Belvedere Courtyard). This collection of Greek and Roman sculpture was an inspiration to Renaissance artists to look back at Greek culture and arts. The collection was added to and re-grouped throughout the next two centuries. Since then many different works of art were acquired and in 1854 Pope John XXIII moved the combined collections into the Vatican Museums where they stand today.

In 1932 the definitive seat of the Vatican Picture Gallery (the Pinacoteca), was inaugurated near the monumental entrance of the Vatican Museums. The collection contains some masterpieces of the greatest artists of the history of Italian painting, from Giotto to Beato Angelico, from Melozzo da Forlì to Perugino and to Raphael, from Leonardo to Tiziano, to Veronese, to Caravaggioand to Crespi.

The gem of the collections at the Vatican is the Sistine Chapel with its famous frescoed ceiling by Michelangelo. No other work of art can compare with its power and magnificence and is among Western civilization’s greatest achievements. Painted as he lay on scaffolding for four years (1508-1512), it depicts the biblical story of Creation in nine scenes. The frescoes underwent a complete restoration between 1979 and 1999 and Michaelangelo’s startling use of light and color has been revealed in its true beauty. The “Last Judgment”, behind the altar, is equally powerful and was painted at the end of Michelangelo’s life. When Pope Pius III saw it on completion in 1541 it brought him to his knees. The Sistine Chapel has served as the gathering place of the College of Cardinals when the time comes to elect a new pope, since its completion in the 16th century

Another highlight of the Vatican Museums is Raphael’s famous stanza (several rooms containing many of the artist’s masterpieces). In 1508 Pope Julius II employed Raphael to decorate the rooms with biblical scenes. The result was a Renaissance tour de force. Of the four rooms, the second and third were decorated mainly by Raphael. Giulio Romano (circa 1499-1546) and other assistants of Raphael decorated the others. Not to be missed is Raphael’s large wall painting titled "The School of Athens" in the room ‘Stanza della Segnatura’, which was executed in 1510-1511. In it Raphael depicted the great pre-Christian thinkers, Aristotle, Plato, etc., with the faces of the leading artists of Raphael’s day, including competitor, Michelangelo.

The Museums also offer a great variety of other collections, including ancient Greek as well as Roman art (of which the Vatican owns the largest collection in the world), and Egyptian and Etruscan art.

Sistine Chapel
• Handing over of the keys (Perugino)
• Creation of Adam (Michelangelo)
• The Last Judgment (Michelangelo)

Raphael's Rooms
• School of Athens (Raphael)
• Liberation of St Peter (Raphael)

Pinacoteca
• The Transfiguration (Raffaello Sanzio)
• Deposition from the Cross (Caravaggio)

Gregorian Egyptian Museum
• Mummy in its case

Gregorian Etruscan Museum
• Fibula

Ethnological Missionary Museum
• Quetzalcóatl, Pre-Colombian Mexican divinity

• Gregorian Egyptian Museum
• Near Eastern Antiquities
• Alexandria and Palmyra
• Antiquities from Palestine
• Room of the Assyrian relief sculptures
• Gregorian Etruscan Museum
• Antiquarium romanum
• Collection of vases
• Classical Antiquities (Greek and Roman)
• Pio Christian Museum (with the Christian and Hebrew Lapidary)
• Pinacoteca (picture gallery)
• Tapestries
• Ceramics (18th-19th century)
• Miniature mosaics
• Collection of modern Religious Art
• Missionary-Ethnological Museum
• Museo Sacro (formerly part of the Vatican Library)
• Gregorian Profane Museum
• Vatican Historical Museum

•Belvedere Palace
•Upper Galleries (Gallery of the Candelabra; of Tapestries and of Maps)
•Apartment of St. Pius V
•Sala delle Dame
•Room of the Immaculate Conception
•Raphael Stanze
•Room of the Chiaroscuri
•Chapel of Nicholas V
•Chapel of Urban VIII
•Sistine Chapel
•Borgia Apartment
•Salone Sistino
•Room of the Aldobrandini Wedding
•Lower Galleries (Urban VIII, Alexandrine, Clementine)

Why does the present day Basilica stand in the same location as Caligula's ancient circus, where Saint Peter was crucified in 67 AD?

How many artists contributed to the construction of Saint Peter', the world's largest basilica ?

How much time was needed before they were able to cover the enormous dome which for years remained open?

How has the way of thinking and representing humanity, suffering, ecstasy, and God changed in the last millennium? How and why have the faces, forms, colours and gestures of the human figures changed in the paintings from Giotto , Raphael , Titian and Caravaggio exhibited in the Art Gallery ?

What immense tragedy is expressed in the marble group of Laocoon, which captures him and his children at the moment of death under attack by serpents sent by Athena ?

Of what boundless admiration was this statue an object of,even at the time of Nero, who wanted it in his Golden House ?

Why did Raphael depict himself, Bramante , Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci as the philosophers in his very famous of the School of Athens ?

And why, in the Last Judgment of the Sistine Chapel, did Michelangelo paint in his own face in the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew who was skinned alive ?

The Basilica of St. Peter is in the heart of the Vatican City, an independent sovereign state on the right bank of the Tiber river, in the centre of Rome.
The Vatican State is the smallest State in the world, and what remains of temporal dominions of the Church, which were annexed to Italy at the end of 1800's with the unification of the country.

The Basilica as we see it today, with its ribbed dome stands impressively in its square which seems to welcome all the pilgrims of the world in the embrace of the Mother Church. It was designed by the most famous architects and geniuses of the Renaissance and Baroque time.

The Basilica stands on the foundations of the Constantinian basilica, that stood for over a thousand years on a sacred area of Pagan-Christians mausoleums. St. Peter's Square with its famous colonnade which represents one of the most brilliant ideas of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, is 320 meters wide with a central ellipsis of 240 meters and is surrounded by 4 rows of 284 columns and 88 pilasters. The balustrade above the columns is decorated with 140 statues of Saints. Below, a huge stairway of three flights flanked by the statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. In the center of the square there are two great fountains and an obelisk.

The facade of the Basilica -14.69 mt. wide and 47.3 mt. high - is made of travertine of Tivoli. It features a unique structure of Corinthian columns and frames a broad central portico with two arcades on either side (the one on the left leads to the City of the Vatican); above, nine balconies with windows (the central one is the loggia of the blessings) and a canonical attic surmounted by the balustrade that supports thirteen statues. Five bronze doors lead inside. In the middle of the church dominate the magnificent "dome"by Michelangelo and the smaller domes of the Gregorian and Clementine chapels.

Inside, the Basilica is 186 m long (218.7 with the portico,or front hall), the main nave is 46 m in height and the height of the dome is 119 m. Under the dome is the papal altar, with the famous canopy by Bernini rising over it.
The sumptuousness of the interior is breathtaking: 45 altars,11 chapels, around 10 thousand square meters of mosaics and many other masterpieces, such as the “Pietà”by Michelangelo.
The tombs of several popes can be found under St. Peters Church.

Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, wanted the building of the Basilica in 315 AD exactly on the site where the tomb of Christ's first Apostle was worshipped.

Originally the Vatican area was an unhealthy and uninhabited place. Its condition improved at the beginning of the 1st century, when the area closest to the Tiber River was reclaimed. Following works saw the creation of gardens, large parks, villas and outstanding buildings, such as Naumachia Vaticana, probably used for water games and the Mausoleum of Hadrian, today known as Castel Sant'Angelo, and the private circus of Caligula. Along via Cornelia there were tombs, altars and sepulchers, in total respect of the Roman law that prescribed for all burial places to be located outside of residential areas.

Built by Emperor Caligula between 37 and 40 AD, the building was located on the left side of the current basilica, in the valley leading down to the river. The circus was the stage for the first persecution of the Christians by Nero.The position of the circus has been known since at least the 1600's, also due to the fact that the obelisk rising in the centre of the circus stood in its original place until 1586, when it was moved to the centre of St. Peter's square upon orders of Sixtus V. The event is reported by Domenico Fontana in his book, Della Trasportatione dell’Obelisco Vaticano et delle Fabriche di Nostro Signore Papa Sisto V, Roma 1590 (“about the transportation of the Vatican Obelisk and the works undertaken by His Holiness Sixtus V"). The operation cost 40,000 scudi, 800 workers, 140 horses and 40 hoists; Sixtus V emanated an order with the death penalty for anyone who obstructed works, or even made noise: the lifting operations took place in absolute silence and had to be accompanied only by the sound of a trumpet. It is said that Fontanahad his horse ready for the escape in case the obelisk had fallen during the operation. Fontana succeeded in his work also thanks to one of the workers, the sailor called Bresca,who seeing that the supporting ropes were about to break, broke the silence by shouting out "acqua alle funi!"(water to the ropes!).

The circus was already out of use one hundred and fifty years after its construction, at the time of the Emperor Caracalla, when a large circular mausoleum was built above the circus not too far from the obelisk and later dedicated to St. Andrew.

The radical transformation of the entire Vatican area took place in the 4thcentury, when Christianity rapidly took over pagan worship. After the abdication of Diocletian, responsible for the last great persecutions, the wars of succession to conquer the power ended with the nomination in 307 AD of Emperor Constantine. Son of one of Diocletian’s generals, Constantine was recognized as Emperor in 312, after the defeat at Saxa Rubra, near Rome, of his rival Maxentius, on October 28th, who drowned in the Tiber river. The following year, the Emperor established the liberalization the religion with the edict of Milan, ensuring that Christianity was no longer obstructed and could be worshipped freely.

From then on, political and religious powers were no longer unified in the person of the Emperor, to the point where in 330 AD the capital was transferred to the East, leading to the founding of a city named after himself on the Bosphorus: Constantinople. He made of Rome the religious centre of the Empire and for this purpose started an intense building program that had to give to the rising Church its worthy places of worship. The first building erected was the Basilica,in order to assure an adequate celebration of the prince of the apostles. The church of San Giovanni in Lateranon followed, then the Papal residence and the Imperial palace; followed by Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, San Pietro and Marcellino,San Sebastiano, San Lorenzo outside the walls and finally the church of Sant'Agnese.

St. Peter's Basilica grew also thanks to works and donations made by princes and popes; in 800 Charles the Great was crowned by the Pope Leo III, after him was Lotario, Ludovico II° and Federico III°.

At the beginning of the Early Middle Ages, the city of Rome went under a progressive decline, no longer the heart of a great Empire but the target for sacking by the Barbarians, by the Goths of Alarico (410) and by Vitige(537-538), by the Vandals of Genserico (445), who cut the aqueducts to bend the city and finally by Totila (545-546).

One thousand years after its foundation, St. Peter's was going to ruin and Niccolò V° decided to undertook extensive works of restoration upon suggestion of Leon Battista Alberti and the project of Bernardo Rossellino. During the Renaissance in Italy and in Europe a new cultural and political climate was breathed, the rebuilding of Rome began (the urban situation of the period and the transformations) on the initiative of a new generation of popes who saw the building works as a means for reaching them asses that, Niccolò V°, the humanist pope, thought needed to be fascinated by grand works.

And so began the magnificent plan of Niccolò V, the restoration of ancient monuments that could be used as the infrastructure of the papal city: the Aurelian walls, the bridges, the Mausoleum of Hadrian transformed into a castle, several aqueducts, the reconstruction or repair of the forty basilicas making up the Holy Stations of pilgrimage and finally the creation of a small city on the Vatican hill, seen as a holy city different from the profane city,on the other side of the Tiber and connected only via the bridge of Castel S.Angelo.
Niccolò V only managed to complete a small part of his project. The new basilica was constructed by Giulio II della Rovere. Works began with the demolition of a large part of the old church, following the project of Bramante, with the intention of building a Greek cross plan edifice inspired by the Pantheon. The central pillars of the design by Bramante were created, with the large support arches of the dome, and the spaces created adjacent to the central part, then works stopped for 20 years. In 1527 there was the terrible sacking of Rome by the Lanzichenecchi.

The direction of works was then continued - with strange and recurring competition between Greek cross plan and Latin cross plan - by Frà Giocondo, Raffaello, Giuliano da Sangallo, Baldassarre Peruzzi, Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane and finally Michelangelo, who re-applied the design of Bramante, restructuring the smaller areas surrounding the central part and beginning the construction of the dome, which was only completed under Sixtus V in 1593 by Giacomo Della Porta and Domenico Fontana. Under the pontificate of Paul V the decision was made to restore the basilica with the definite return to the Latin cross plan. Architect Carlo Maderno added three chapels to each side of the building and conducted the naves up to the current facade (begun in 1607 terminated in 1614 and restored on the occasion of the Jubilee 2000). Maderno’s works was criticized by many because hiding from view the tambour, the rising effect of the dome is dampened. The consecration of the new basilica was celebrated by Urban VIII in November 1626.

Upon conclusion of this grand work, the construction of the city was stopped, but the miraculous balance between ancient ruins and the Baroque scenes of papal Rome is so great that it has fascinated and enraptured great travelers such as Byron, Goethe, Stendhal.