St. Peter's Square is one of the masterpieces of urban design of all time and the gateway to the largest church in Christendom. When you leave the little streets of Borgo or Via della Conciliazione and suddenly come out into this enormous ellipse, the feeling is unforgettable: two gigantic arms of columns seem to open up to embrace visitors, with the basilica's façade at the far end, the Egyptian obelisk planted in the centre and the murmur of the two fountains. Bernini conceived it precisely as 'the motherly arms of the Church' welcoming the faithful.
It is not just a beautiful space: it is a place full of life and history. Hundreds of thousands of people gather here to see the Pope at major celebrations; it is here that the election of a new pontiff is announced to the world, with the famous white smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney and the 'Habemus Papam'; it is here that John Paul II prayed and was shot in 1981. Every Wednesday and every Sunday, the square fills up again with pilgrims from all over the planet.
This practical guide explains what to look at in the square —the ancient obelisk, the 284 columns, the fountains, the spots where the colonnade lines up into a single row as if by magic—, how to attend a Papal Audience or the Angelus, when it is least crowded and how to link the visit with the basilica and the dome. Access is free: you only need to go through the security check if you want to enter the basilica.
The square was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini between 1656 and 1667, commissioned by Pope Alexander VII, to give St. Peter's Basilica a worthy space where the faithful could gather and where the Pope could bless the crowds. Bernini solved a difficult problem —an irregular plot in front of an overly wide façade— with a brilliant idea: a large elliptical square surrounded by a colonnade four columns deep, topped by 140 statues of saints, opening out like two arms. In the centre he placed an Egyptian obelisk that had stood in the Vatican since Antiquity (it had presided over Nero's circus) and that in 1586 had been moved to that spot with enormous effort. The full story, from the pharaohs' obelisk to Bernini's Baroque stagecraft, is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The monumental heart of the Vatican: St. Peter's Basilica, raised over the apostle's tomb, Michelangelo's dome and the great elliptical square embraced by Bernini's colonnade.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before the square existed, this corner of the Vatican Hill was a place of spectacle and of death. In the 1st century, the emperors Caligula and Nero had a circus here, a track for chariot races. To decorate the central 'spina' of that circus, Caligula had a red granite obelisk brought from Egypt. It had been carved centuries earlier, bore no hieroglyphs and had stood in the city of Heliopolis. That obelisk, the same one that dominates the square today, was carried by sea on an enormous ship, a feat that already amazed the Romans of the time.
According to Christian tradition, Nero's persecutions of the Christians after the great fire of Rome in the year 64 took place in that circus. The apostle Peter is said to have been crucified there or nearby, upside down at his own request, because he considered himself unworthy to die as Christ had. He was buried in the neighbouring necropolis, and centuries later his tomb would become the centre of the basilica and, by extension, of the square. So, according to that account, the obelisk we see today on the axis of Piazza San Pietro was a silent witness to the apostle's martyrdom.
For centuries, while Constantine's old basilica was built and later torn down, the obelisk stayed fixed in its original spot, off to one side and half forgotten. It would take until the late Renaissance for someone to dare move it and give it the central place it holds today.
In 1585, the energetic Pope Sixtus V decided that the old obelisk should be moved to the centre of the open space in front of the new basilica, which was still under construction. The task looked impossible. A granite monolith about 25 metres tall and weighing around 330 tonnes had to be moved without breaking it, something nobody had attempted since Antiquity. The job went to the architect and engineer Domenico Fontana, who designed a colossal system of scaffolding, capstans, pulleys and ropes.
The operation, carried out in 1586, involved hundreds of workers, dozens of horses and many winches. First the obelisk was carefully lowered from its original base, then dragged on rollers to its new site and finally raised again. It was a major event in the Rome of the day. The most famous legend says that Sixtus V, to prevent fatal distractions, ordered the crowd to keep absolute silence on pain of death. At the critical moment of the lift, the ropes began to overheat under the strain and were close to giving way, until a sailor from Sanremo named Bresca shouted 'Water on the ropes!' ('Acqua alle funi!'). He broke the order but saved the operation. As a reward, his family is said to have been granted the privilege of supplying the Vatican's palms for Palm Sunday.
Once it stood upright, the obelisk was 'Christianised'. The old bronze sphere at its tip, which tradition said held the ashes of Julius Caesar, was removed, and the top was crowned with a cross said to contain a relic of the True Cross. The pagan obelisk of the pharaohs was thus consecrated, ready to become the heart of the future square.
The square as we know it was created between 1656 and 1667. Pope Alexander VII commissioned it from Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the undisputed genius of the Roman Baroque, who by then had already made the baldachin and the Cathedra for the basilica. The goal was twofold. The basilica's façade needed a worthy, monumental space in front of it, and there had to be a place able to hold huge crowds so the Pope could bless them, both from the central loggia of the façade and from the window of the Apostolic Palace.
Bernini faced a difficult problem. Maderno's façade was too wide and too low, and the site had an irregular shape. His solution was so brilliant that it still amazes people today. Instead of a square plaza, he laid out a great ellipse embraced by a colonnade of four rows of Tuscan Doric columns, 284 columns and 88 pilasters in all, topped by a balustrade with 140 statues of saints. In front of the ellipse he placed a trapezoidal space that links it to the façade and optically corrects its proportions, making it look more slender.
Bernini himself explained the meaning of his work. The colonnade represents 'the motherly arms of the Church', opening to welcome the faithful, reconcile those who have strayed and call those who do not yet believe. The geometry has an astonishing mathematical precision. The ellipse has two foci, each marked by a disc in the paving, and from either one the four rows of columns line up to look like a single row. The obelisk of 1586 stood in the centre, and the fountains stand over the two foci: Maderno's from 1613 and the one Bernini added around 1677 for symmetry. The result is one of the most perfect urban spaces ever conceived.
For almost three centuries, people reached Bernini's square through the maze of medieval lanes in the Borgo district, the 'Spina di Borgo'. The huge ellipse opened up suddenly in front of visitors, a surprise effect many considered an essential part of Bernini's genius. Everything changed after the Lateran Pacts of 1929, which reconciled the Italian State with the Holy See and created Vatican City. To celebrate that 'conciliation', Mussolini's regime built a great straight avenue, Via della Conciliazione, between 1936 and 1950, demolishing the Spina di Borgo to make room for it.
The project was highly controversial. It swept away an entire historic neighbourhood and, according to its critics, destroyed the surprise effect Bernini had sought by leaving the square exposed from far away. In return, it created the most famous and most photographed front view of St. Peter's, with Michelangelo's dome presiding over the axis of the avenue. That is the image we associate with the Vatican today.
Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the square became the great stage of the Church's life and one of the most recognisable places on the planet. Hundreds of thousands of people gather here for major celebrations and historic moments: papal funerals, canonisations, the days of the jubilee years. It was here, on 13 May 1981, that Pope John Paul II was shot while greeting the crowd from the popemobile, an attack he survived. And it is here, with the whole world watching, that white smoke and the words 'Habemus Papam' announce the election of each new pope.
Today St. Peter's Square is much more than a Baroque work of art. It is a living space that moves to the rhythm of the Church's life and the world's attention. Every Wednesday, the General Audience brings together pilgrims from every continent to see the Pope. Every Sunday at noon, the faithful gather for the Angelus beneath the window of the Apostolic Palace. On major feast days such as Christmas, Holy Week and Pentecost, the whole square fills up. It is also where the Pope gives the 'Urbi et Orbi' blessing, to the city of Rome and to the whole world.
Together with the basilica, the palaces and the Museums, the square is part of Vatican City, which UNESCO added to the World Heritage List in 1984 in recognition of its exceptional artistic and spiritual value. Its design has influenced countless later squares and urban projects. It is also one of the most widely seen images on the planet, broadcast to billions of television viewers at every papal event.
For visitors, the square offers a unique mix: the monumental grandeur of the colonnade and the obelisk, the feeling of standing at the heart of a tiny sovereign state, the murmur of the fountains and, if you pick the right day, the chance to see the Pope. It is the perfect lead-in to the basilica, and one of those places that still surprises you the first time you set foot in it, however many times you have seen it in photos. It is an open-air meeting point for Bernini's geometry, a pharaoh's granite and twenty centuries of religious history.
