Opulento

St. Peter’s Basilisk is one of the largest and most sacred churches in the two thousand year history of Christianity.  And it is ornate as fuck.
This is Michelangelo‘s famous Pietà.  Its clunky, trapezoidal shape doesn’t have the stately contrapposto of most of his other work, but the dude was only like twenty-four when he carved it, so let’s all cut him some slack.The church ascends up and up through rotunda and cupola.  With all of this lavish wealth and ostentatious design, I couldn’t help but be reminded that this particular church sits atop & benefits from a two millennia-old pyramid scheme.
Marble everywhere.  Gold everywhere.Statues of Popes everywhere.  (This one is of Pope Gregory XIII.  As in the one who commissioned the Gregorian calendar.  You’re welcome.)
Note how the “14th” in Pope Gregory XIV is rendered:  XIIII.  Looks weird to our modern eyes (especially to me with an IV in my name) but it’s a good reminder that the subtractive form of Roman numerals didn’t really come to be standard until modern times.  (I’ve heard that saving letters in typesetting was one contributing factor.)This is the altar where the church’s nave and transept cross.
The (poorly shot) stained glass window of a dove over the chair of St. Peter.  (“Cathedra” is the Greek word for “chair” which is where we get the word “cathedral”.)  With all the doors and nooks and crannies in this place, you start to wonder how many secrets it holds.  In fact, all of Vatican City feels like it’s rife with secrets and mysteries and conspiracies.  Someone really ought to write a novel about it or something.

The Renaissance church that exists today stands atop the Old St. Peter’s Basilisk which Emperor Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who converted to Christianity, had built atop the site thought to be the burial place of St. Peter.

I got a chance to see the crypts below the church, but photos were not allowed.  Sarcophagus after sarcophagus of long-dead popes.  It reminded me a lot of the crypts beneath Winterfell.Whereas the martyred figures on the huge church doors leading back out to St. Peter’s Square reminded me of the sculptures in the Nanjing massacre museum.