Vatican, St. Peters Square

(2 photos)
The approach to Piazza San Pietro is awesome. Our eyes are busy as we walk the Via Conciliazione toward St. Peter’s, trying to take in the most striking features of the Piazza San Pietro — St. Peter’s Basilica with Michelangelo’s dome, and Giovanni Bernini’s colonnade of 284 travertine marble columns that partially encircle the Piazza San Pietro. Like a pair of parentheses they enclose a fountain on each side of the Piazza, and the obelisk in the center.

The Piazza is always filled with foot and vehicle traffic — taxis, city buses, tourist buses, two Americans in their RV, and people walking by the thousands — including the two Americans after they found a parking place. It was especially crowded on Wednesdays, when Pope John Paul II held his afternoon audience with the people.
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If you enter St. Peter’s in the left most front door (between the pillars), a short distance inside there is an elevator. Ride up to the Basilica roof at the base of the dome, then walk across the roof to a door that will permit you to enter the base of the dome. There is a walkway around the base, from which you can see down into the Basilica, and around the dome there are mosaics as seen in this photo.

Two different years we climbed the 305 steps of the almost endless, interleaved, precarious one-way staircase, to the lantern at the very tip of St. Peter’s dome. The steps are built between the outer and inner domes, and since the dome curves, we must lean at that same angle — but don’t miss it.