Travel to Italy: Papal Rome: Photo 9

A very different architectural world, especially for a city dominated for a thousand years by basilicas. St. Peters was commissioned in 1506 by Julius II, who desired a fitting tomb for himself. The huge church was under construction so long--120 years--that he never saw it completed. The facade was finished in 1613, about 20 years after the dome, and is so massive that it almost hides the dome--not easy when you're talking about a dome rising 450 feet above the pavement. To help get a sense of scale: those portico columns, at 90 feet, are only seven feet shorter than the column of Trajan.

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Back to Italy: Papal Rome chapter

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