Piazza San Pietro

From the Ponte Sant'Angelo (post below) it’s a brief walk to the Vatican. I had a quick coffee on the grand street that leads to St. Peter's, and would you believe, a crowd was forming and starting to get excited. My trip had turned out to be a fortuitous piece of timing. Before long, a very large convoy, beginning with emergency vehicles, police motorcycles, cars, vans, then limousines of all sizes, came blaring around the corner, and the masses began cheering and taking photos. I think it was the pope.

(Piazza San Pietro 1)

As it was dusk, I decided to stay in the Piazza San Pietro, leaving my visit to St. Peter’s and the museums for a later date, rather than attempt to cram the experience. (I’ve been building up to this, you might say, and studying up also, to prepare for what is apparently one of the most rewarding, but also most exhausting museum experiences in the world. Apparently there is even a specific medical diagnosis for exhaustion in the face of the Vatican museums, called ‘Stendhal syndrome’, after the novelist, who collapsed and had to be taken to hospital!)

(Piazza San Pietro 2)

The piazza is really the first that has had a physical effect on me, and I’m in no way overstating this. The massive columns, which I forgot to photograph really, embrace the space in a god-like group hug – it is impossible not to feel ‘included’ you might say. As Dickens wrote: ‘The beauty of the Piazza… with its clusters of exquisite columns, and its gushing fountains – so fresh, so broad, and free, and beautiful – nothing can exaggerate.’

(Piazza San Pietro 3)