St. Peter’s Square is one of the great icons of the world: a World Heritage Site, visited by more than 10 million people a year and a universal symbol of the Catholic faith. This Saturday, it will also be the stage for the “Grace for the World” concert, which you will be able to follow in streaming from CDMX. And to make the experience from home even more complete, here are three secrets you may not have known about the Vatican‘s most famous square.
St. Peter’s Square began as a circus
In the times of the Roman Empire, where the square stands today, there was the Circus of Nero, a gigantic enclosure with chariot races, shows and also public executions, among which it is said that St. Peter himself was executed. Over the centuries the circus disappeared and, in 333, Constantine ordered the construction of the first basilica on this site. This marked the beginning of a transformation that, centuries later, would give way to the current square.
Its colonnade has an optical trick
Erected in the 17th century by Bernini as a great embrace of Rome, the colonnades of St. Peter’s Square stretch for more than 300 meters and are crowned by 140 statues. The most curious thing, however, is not their size (that too), but the effect they hide. If you stand on a tile next to the central obelisk and look around, you will see that the four rows of columns are aligned as if they were one.
The obelisk was about to fall
The obelisk arrived from Egypt in the time of Emperor Caligula and spent centuries in Nero’s Circus. In 1586, Sixtus V ordered it to be placed in the center of the square: a titanic challenge for the engineering of the time, as you can imagine.
Such was the complexity that it is said that, during the maneuver, the ropes that bound it began to give way, but before it all ended in disaster, a man in the crowd saved the operation by shouting “Water to the ropes!”. Since then, this 25-meter block of stone has stood firm in the Vatican as one of its great emblems.
On September 13, St. Peter’s Square will add a new page to its long history with “Grace for the World,” the first live concert at the Vatican. It will be a day of global music — and a much-needed message of unity — with Karol G, Pharrell, Andrea Bocelli or John Legend in front of thousands of people and millions more following the broadcast.