SAINT PETER'S, Interior And Michelangelo Pieta'

Once you enter St. Peter's you're practically dazed by its size: they estimate that it can hold up to sixty thousand people. The entrance and the back wall are 218 meters apart, which is the equivalent of two soccer fields, one after the other, and its walkable surface exceeds 15,000 square meters! Here you can sense all the power of Bernini's Renaissance architecture and visual acuity, who rendered the proportional and harmonious set a perfect blend of style, light, and color. At the end of the central nave, in an exciting widening and narrowing of spaces, the dome majestically opens up before you. The extraordinary baldachin below it takes the spot of the high altar.

But at the beginning of the seventeenth century the architect Carlo Maderno added the naves and completed the façade, and the immense central layout of the basilica conceived by Bramante and Michelangelo was radically distorted. The effect was that of an "empty", disconcerting, spread out building, almost without any reference points: the high altar was far away and too small - almost invisible - and subdued by the gigantic dimensions of the structure....