St. Peter's Square
The heart of world Christianity, St. Peter's Square, owes its characteristic elliptical shape to the imposing colonnade by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which, commissioned by Pope Alexander VII Chigi, consists of 284 columns arranged radially in four rows.The construction took eleven years of work (1656-1667), more than 40 thousand cubic meters of travertine transported from Tivoli by land or pulled by horses along the river banks.
In designing the colonnade, Gian Lorenzo Bernini played with optical illusions, obtaining a spectacular and scenic result. If you cross the square, you can see the columns come together and move apart, with a feeling of movement and alternation between full and empty. If you look at the columns from the center of the square and place yourself on the point indicated by one of the two marble disks on the pavement marking the ellipse foci, the colonnade seems composed of a single row. The outer columns disappear behind those of the inner row.
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