Buona pasqua! Easter in Rome... Let's just put it this way: chocolate certainly isn't the priority. In fact, it was only in the week leading up to the easter weekend that the small displays of chocolate eggs appeared in the supermarket - that's right, not a month, not February, but a WEEK before easter, a couple of SMALL displays (unlike at home!).
Though I didn't feel up to braving the enormous crowds for the Pope's address, I decided to go to St. Peter's in the afternoon, when things had quietened down. This was the first time I'd been inside the great basilica...
Apparently the church can hold 60,000 people - but this seems like an exaggeration by my estimation, and I suspect this figure must include the capacity of the Piazza San Pietro also, though of course I might be wrong.
On entering, I tried to leave Michelangelo's Pieta until last, but like a magnet it kept dragging my eyes towards it so I just gave in. Standing before the masterpiece (behind protective glass since someone attacked it in '72) for a good ten minutes, I realised I wasn't the only English-speaking tourist who was compelled to mutter the sculptor's age at the time of completion, '25', with astonishment. Bernini's 30-meter high 'baldachin' (read pergola!) over the papal altar (under which San Pietro himself is apparently buried) looks to me a bit like it belongs in a Tim Burton film.
If the dome looks impressive from the outside, from the inside the cupola is simply stunning (see first photo above). There is a apparently some argument as to whether Michelangelo designed it, although he was certainly chief architect when it was commenced. Because it was Easter Sunday, the famous dome ascent was out of the question - which gives me a perfect excuse to come back very soon (not that one needs an excuse, I suppose).
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