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St. Peter's Basilica
The Renaissance basilica over the tomb of Saint Peter, principal church of the papacy
St. Peter's Basilica is the great church of the Catholic world, the stage for papal Masses, canonizations, and funerals, and the backdrop for crowds that fill the square below the papal windows. Catholics hold that it stands over the grave of Saint Peter, the apostle they regard as the first pope, and many of his successors are buried in the grottoes beneath its floor. It is not a cathedral, since the pope's cathedral as bishop of Rome is St. John Lateran, but it is the principal church of the papacy and among the largest churches ever built. Michelangelo's dome, Bernini's colonnade, and the art inside make a visit both a pilgrimage and a lesson in the Renaissance and Baroque.
The basilica closes the western end of St. Peter's Square inside Vatican City, the independent state enclosed by Rome. Bernini's two curving colonnades, four columns deep, embrace the square around an ancient Egyptian obelisk. Carlo Maderno's broad travertine facade opens into a nave about 186 meters long, beneath a dome designed by Michelangelo that rises about 136 meters to the top of its cross. Inside are Michelangelo's Pietà, Bernini's bronze baldachin over the papal altar, and his gilded Chair of Saint Peter in the apse. Excavations beneath the grottoes uncovered a Roman necropolis and the shrine Catholics venerate as Peter's tomb. Visitors pass security checks to enter, and stairs and an elevator lead up to the dome for views across Rome.
Emperor Constantine built the first basilica over the site in the fourth century. By the 1400s it was failing, and in 1506 Pope Julius II laid the foundation stone of a replacement. Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Maderno each reshaped the design over more than a century, and Pope Urban VIII consecrated the new church on November 18, 1626. Bernini finished the square's colonnades in the 1660s. UNESCO inscribed Vatican City, with its basilica, as a World Heritage site in 1984. The 2025 Jubilee drew more than 33 million pilgrims to Rome by the Vatican's count, and through 2026 the basilica is marking the 400th anniversary of its consecration with newly opened areas, a timed booking system for visitors, and a structural monitoring program for the building.