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Piazza di San Pietro Review

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Piazza di San Pietro

Address: West end of Via della Conciliazione, Vatican, Rome | Map It

Vatican Information Office

Category: Squares
Location: Vatican

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Fodor's Review:

Mostly enclosed within high walls that recall the papacy's stormy history, the Vatican opens the spectacular arms of Bernini's Colonnade to embrace the world only at St. Peter's Square, scene of the pope's public appearances. Actually an oval, and one of Bernini's most spectacular masterpieces, Piazza di San Pietro was completed in 1667 after only 11 years' work and is capable of holding 400,000 people. Surrounded by a pair of quadruple colonnades, it is gloriously studded with more than 140 statues of saints and martyrs. Look for the two disks set into the piazza's pavement on either side of the central obelisk. If you stand on either disk, a trick of perspective makes the colonnades seem to consist of a single row of columns. Bernini had an even grander visual effect in mind when he designed the square. By opening up this immense, airy, and luminous space in a neighborhood of narrow, shadowy streets, he created a contrast that would surprise and impress anyone who emerged from the darkness into the light, in a characteristically Baroque metaphor. At the piazza center, the 85-foot-high Egyptian obelisk was brought to Rome by Caligula in ad 38, moved here in 1586 by Pope Sixtus V. The emblem at the top of the obelisk is the Chigi star, in honor of Pope Alexander VII, a member of the powerful Chigi family, who commissioned the piazza. Alexander demanded that Bernini make the pope visible to as many people as possible from the Benediction Loggia and to provide a covered passageway for papal processions.

Tips

On the south side of the square you'll find the main Vatican Information Office—the Centro Servizi Vaticani 06/69881662 Mon.-Sat. 8:30-7). Nearby is the Vatican Bookshop (Weekdays 8:30-7, Sat. 8:30-2).

As for the famous Vatican post offices (known for fast handling of outgoing mail), they can be found on both sides of St. Peter's Square and inside the Vatican Museums complex. You can also buy Vatican stamps and coins at the shop annexed to the information office. Although postage rates are the same at the Vatican as elsewhere in Italy, the stamps are not interchangeable, so any material stamped with Vatican stamps must be placed into a blue or yellow Posta Vaticana box.

Public toilets are near the Information Office, under the colonnade and outside the exit of the crypt. Religious objects and souvenirs are sold at shops in the surrounding neighborhood.