Rome Basilica di San Pietro apartments for rent, bed and breakfast, vacation rentals in Rome : district Basilica di San Pietro

The basilica, which is located in the territory of the Vatican City, was built due to a long project that involved a gradual abolition of the former basilica, whose origins go back to the time of Constantine and whose structure existed of five naves with a cloister and the bell tower over more than six centuries.
One started from Bramante’s project which provided for a Greek cross with a hemispherical dome.
The work began in 1506 and were interrupted due to the death of the architect in 1514, as the pillars and arches have been built to support the dome.
After Bramante followed, one after another, Raphael, Peruzzi and Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane who planned the construction of a Latin cross.
But in 1547 Michelangelo again adopted the plan of Bramante but he concentrated on the central dome, providing for it a pointed shape with a double arch rib.
These are the numbers of the great basilica today, admired by millions of people:
The length is 218.7 metres including the portico, the central nave is 26 metres wide and 46.1 metres high, the transept is 154.8 metres long and the diameter of the dome is 42.56 metres and its height to the top of the cross is 136.57 metres.
The church can hold up to 60,000 people, in comparison, the cathedral in Milan can hold 37,000 and the Basilica of San Paolo in Rome can hold 25,000 people.
There are 46 altars and 233 windows. The facade is 114 metres wide and 45 metres high.
It is unnecessary to emphasize the richness of the works of art in the basilica: during the centuries after the creation by Michelangelo, new artistic elements of exceptional importance were brought inside the church.
It is enough to mention the huge bronze canopy of Bernini, rising above the papal altar, the vital centre of the entire basilica and the statue of the Pieta by Michelangelo, one of many masterpieces preserved in the church, which in May 1972 was the subject of an assassination attempt by Laszlo Toth, an Austria-Hungary mentally disabled.
The basilica is a large and priceless reliquary which stands on the grave of St. Peter in the Holy Vatican Grottoes.
It is the global centre of the Christian world, the symbol of the Church as an institution and the primacy of the Roman Apostolic See, the "mother church" of all of other Episcopal sees generated by it.