St. Peter's Square

St. Peter's Square is the largest embrace in architecture: two curving arms of two hundred and eighty-four columns, four rows deep, that Bernini opened from the basilica's façade in the 1660s so that the whole world could be held in a single glance from the window of the Pope. At the centre stands an obelisk that Caligula shipped from Egypt and Nero used for a circus, and that once watched Peter die; two fountains keep the ellipse in time; and a white line of travertine across the pavement — easy to miss, impossible to unsee — marks where the smallest state on Earth ends and Rome begins.

The traveller comes at dawn, when the square is a stage without an audience and the dome is pink; stands on one of the two marble discs between obelisk and fountain and watches the four rows of columns collapse into one; walks the arms as an arcade; queues for the basilica (free, security only) and goes up the dome first, five hundred and fifty-one steps, for the ellipse seen as Bernini drew it; then descends into Michelangelo's nave, the Pietà behind her glass, the baldachin, the tomb; and, on a Wednesday, sits with twenty thousand others for the audience, or on a Sunday looks up at noon for the Angelus.

The Guide's honesty: the square is free and always open, the basilica is free and the queue is a security line, not a ticket line — go before eight or after four —; the dress code (shoulders and knees) is enforced at the door without discussion; the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel are a separate visit with a separate entrance a fifteen-minute walk north, and their queue is the one to book; the men in striped uniforms are the Swiss Guard and have been since 1506; the 'skip-the-line guides' inside the colonnade skip mostly your patience; and the best photograph is not from the square but from the Via della Conciliazione at dusk, when Mussolini's boulevard finally earns its width.