St. Peter: Trouble and Triumph
1506-1626 AD
1506 1506
12.26E41.52N
ARC

VATICAN CITY, ROME, ITALY
	In his rush to escape the crush of the crowd, Pope Julius II laid the cornerstone crooked for the new Church of Saint Peter. That little incident on April 18, 1506 was just the first of many problems to come, but the final result would be an awe-inspiring structure that is the foremost church in the Roman Catholic religion.
	Architect Donato Bramante had designed a church in the shape of a Greek Cross (each arm of equal length) with a dome at the center and four smaller domes at the sides, but a year before he died in 1514 the new pope, Leo X, named Raphael, Baldassare, Peruzzi and Giuliano da Sangallo to oversee the construction. The four couldn't decide whether to go with a Greek cross or a Latin cross (a cross with one arm longer than the others), but they did add a series of monuments and chapels to the building that weren't in the original plan.
	Then came an uproar in Germany. The Augustinian monk Martin Luther began teaching against the church's collection of indulgences, which were being used in part to finance the rebuilding of the church. Luther's resistance eventually led to a deep split in the church.
	Then, in 1534, Pope Paul III asked Michelangelo to take over the project. But Pope Julius had been so slow in paying him for his work on the Sistine Chapel that Michelangelo was not anxious for the job, but fortunately he was persuaded.
	It was a difficult working situation, with Michelangelo repeatedly called upon to justify his changes. Nevertheless, he managed to remodel all the plans for St. Peters in an attempt to unify the many elements that had been added over the years. He lived to see construction begin on the lower portion of the great central dome he designed, which is the most notable feature of the building, but after his death, the body of the church was again redesigned.
	The final element was added to the church by Pope Paul V, who lengthened one of the arms of the cross to make the church in the shape of a Latin cross. Then, on Nov. 18, 1626, 120 years after it was begun, Saint Peter was consecrated by Pope Urban VIII.
	The wide, oval piazza in front of the church was designed in the mid 17th Century by Gianiorenzo Bernini in a understated Baroque style. At the center of the piazza is an Egyptian-style obelisk and around the edges is a triple row of columns that taper toward the top, making them appear even taller and more inspiring.
	Though Baroque is usually highly adorned, Bernini wisely left the columns of his colonnade undecorated so as not to distract from Michelangelo's magnificent dome.