St. Peters Square and Plaza

Touring the Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel

I had the great pleasure on touring the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Sistine Chapel. I wanted to give you just a glimpse of what you might see, if you were to visit the Holy See in Vatican City, Rome, Italy. Obviously, any tour of the Vatican is best in person. If you cannot go there, because of limitations on your time, your health or pocketbook, then a tour with pictures is perhaps the second best approach to seeing the Vatican and all the beauty and splendor that it has to offer. The third and less desirable approach to a tour of the Vatican is to do so in your imagination through the words of another, such as this article and this website.

Therefore, the website is entitled Pictures of the Vatican City, Rome, Italy, and its subtitle is "Inside the Vatican Museum, The Sistine Chapel, St Peters Basilica, and more." Since pictures are worth a thousand words, we will intersperse these words with a lot of good quality pictures of Vatican City, the Vatican City Museum, and the Sistine Chapel. We are all very familiar with television pictures of the vast public area or square in front of the Vatican – usually filled with throngs of the Catholic faithful on various important annual events such as Easter.

As the picture above indicates there are few people present in the early morning to appreciate the beauty of the Vatican without having to navigate through a throng of tourists and the faithful. Here is a picture of the St. Peter's Square at the middle end of the spectrum from the standpoint of people. This scene has the look of a typical day. Notice the not just the people crowding around the fountain in the center of this picture, but also the crowd that has formed in front of the massive Doric columns to the right side. They are waiting to enter the main St. Peter's Basilica, where we will be going in a moment, after we get a sense of the front of the Vatican.

Now, before we enter the sanctuary of St. Peter's Basilica, let use take one more look at the plaza on a holy day when the Pope was present. This picture was taken in St. Peters Square on Palm Sunday. It shows the Cardinals in procession and the large surrounding crowds.

While the plaza and exterior of St. Peter's Basilica has been witness to the ebb and flow of humanity for centuries, the interior of the sanctuary is even more spectacular in my opinion than the massive and impressive exterior facade. In the next part of this brief tour we will discuss entering St. Peter's Basilica and the impressiveness of its tremendous scale and beauty.

Tags: mass, Vatican, Vatican City, Saint

Patron Saint

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• St. Peters Square and Plaza (Touring the Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel Go forward to Part 2: Entering St. Peter's Basilica >>> I had the great pleasure on touring the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Sistine Chapel. I wanted to give you just a glimpse of what you might see, if you were to visit the Holy [...])
• Entering St. Peters Basilica (St. Peter's Basilica and Michelangelo's Pieta >> As you enter St. Peter’s Basilica, it is hard not to be awestruck by its vast size and sheer beauty. Obviously, it was built to demonstrate the majesty of the Lord, God, and its sheer size is testament to this objective. For example, as you walk in you will see [...])
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