Vatican, St. Peter's

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(3 photos)
I don’t know which year this picture was taken, as you can see by this time I had a telephoto lens, and took this photo while standing on Via Conciliazione, a long way from St. Peter’s. Some repairs were under way on the right portion of the Basilica. We have heard tourists complain, “They just had to repair and renovate — any one of a million buildings in any country — this year, just when we are visiting.”

The 350 ton granite obelisk (in the center of the photo) was brought to Rome nearly 2,000 years ago and in 1586 was erected in Piazza San Pietro. It took forty-four windlasses, 140 horses, and 900 laborers to accomplish that task. (Or it took 75 horses, 800 men, and four months, another reference says!) Of the (at least) seventeen obelisks in Rome, some were “liberated” from Egypt thousands of years ago, others were built in Rome hundreds of years ago, and a few date from rather recent times.
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There are usually barriers for crowd control, and one year there were a couple of travel trailers in St. Peter’s Square that were in use as the Vatican Post Office, while the real Post Office was being renovated.
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This photo shows about one-half of Bernini’s semicircular portico of 284 travertine marble columns that partially encircle the Piazza San Pietro, and like a pair of parentheses they enclose a fountain on each side of the Piazza, and the obelisk in the center.

Above the colonnade of 52 foot high columns, arranged in four rows, are 140 larger-than-life (10 feet) statues of saints. Giovanni Bernini’s father, Pietro Bernini, designed the fountain at the base of the Spanish Steps.