St Peter’s Basilica stands on the site of a Roman circus built by the Emperor Nero, the same arena, tradition holds, where the apostle Peter was martyred and later buried nearby, a burial site early Christians quietly venerated for centuries before any grand church existed above it. Construction of the current basilica began in 1506 and took 120 years to complete, involving a succession of the era’s greatest architects, Bramante, Raphael, and finally Michelangelo, who took over the project in his seventies and designed its enormous dome without ever living to see it finished.
That dome remains the tallest in the world at 136.6 metres, and climbing the roughly 550 steps to its cupola rewards visitors with one of the most complete views of Rome available anywhere in the city, the final stretch narrowing so much that the curve of the dome itself becomes noticeably steep underfoot.
A Building Funded by Controversy
Financing the basilica’s construction involved the sale of indulgences, payments believed to reduce punishment for sin, a fundraising practice so aggressive it became one of the direct triggers for Martin Luther’s 1517 protest and the Protestant Reformation that followed, meaning the very building meant to glorify the Catholic Church also helped split it. Inside, Michelangelo’s Pieta, sculpted when he was only in his early twenties, remains one of the most technically extraordinary marble sculptures ever produced, now protected behind glass following a 1972 attack.
St Peter’s Square outside, designed by Bernini, was shaped deliberately as an ellipse, its colonnades meant to feel, in Bernini’s own words, like the embracing arms of the Church reaching out to the world.
Painting a Dome That Took a Lifetime
The basilica’s soaring dome and grand colonnade against Roman sky give a watercolourist enormous scale and light to work with. We’ve captured that grandeur in our own St Peter’s Basilica Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of Vatican City for a wall at home.
Built over an emperor’s arena and financed by a controversy that split a church, St Peter’s Basilica remains one of history’s more complicated monuments to faith.