Basilica Di San Pietro aka: St. Peter's Basilica

I was bowled over by the sheer size of the place. I vividly remember markings on the floor showing the lengths of other famous world cathedrals (St. Paul’s was amongst them), which reinforced the message.

it’s awesome! in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

We had to pass a metal detector before entering – there were no lines though (January). We climbed the dome and visited the tombs. But the inside of the basilica is just impossible to describe with words. Huge and impressive come close. In one part a mass was held, in another part you could go to confession. Halfway the cathedral, my boyfriend’s memory card of his camera was full! We had to go out, buy another card (another Gig) and came back to finish our tour. He filmed large parts of it as well, to get an impression of the immense scale.

Mark Twain once described people-watching here and how you could watch as someone started at the front of the basilica and dwindle away as they walked towards the back. Lots of devoted people come here to pray (there’s a statue of St. Peter that is a popular stop I noticed.). There are many beautiful, massive sculptures here worth seeing (and incredible architectural designs all over the place!). Don’t miss the Pieta either. She’s on your right as you enter the basilica. I want to go back someday and climb around in the dome. I didn’t get to do that last time. But it was incredible. You’ll find art on every inch of that place. One of my favorites was an enormous and visually striking work depicting St. Bernadette’s ‘holy call’. (I even guessed who she was before seeing the caption beneath the artwork). It drove home my 12th grade art teacher’s point that the art you see in artbooks isn’t the actual size of the work by a long shot. The real versions take up entire walls.

La pieta, by Miguel Angel