St. Peter's Basilica in Rome

According to tradition the St. Peter's Basilica (Saint Peter) is built on the tomb of the apostle Peter, crucified and sentenced around 60 AC, on the place that the pontificate Anacleto wanted to signal with the building of a "trophy".

It was only with the empire of Constantine and the recognition of the Christian religion as official cult of the Roman Empire that the foundations of the paleochristian basilica of St. Peter were realized.
The works, started in 315 AC, were finished about eleven years later, when Pope Silvestro II consecrated the church with a solemnly ceremony. After more than a millennium of history the building, in which were also hosted some frescoes of Giotto, had reached a degree of heavy degradation when Pope Nicola V decided a radical restoration entrusted to Leon Battista Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino. After the death of the Pontificate, however, Pope Giulio II decided to interrupt the works, changing the project into the building of a new cathedral.
In 1506 AC the work was entrusted to Bramante who started by destroying the pre-existing basilica and then built the base of the one that would have been the biggest cathedral of Christianity. In the more than a hundred years necessary to achieve the works of the Basilica, there were some changes in the direction of the "Fabric of St. Peter"; the most famous artists of the time took the direction of the works; from Raffaello Sanzio, who around 1514 AC chose to transform the plan of the edifice realized by Bramante into a Latin cross, to Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane and Michelangelo, who, under the Pontificate of Paolo III, in addition to decide to go back to the original Greek cross project, also designed the dome of which he personally followed the realization up to his death in 1564 AC.
In the more or less thirty years which followed, the "Fabric of St. Peter" was under the direction first of Vignola and then of the Architects Giacomo Della Porta and Domenico Fontana who have the merit to have brought to achievement, around 1588 AC, the project of Michelangelo of the cupola.
The Basilica of St. Peter reached its actual aspect thanks to the intervention of Carlo Maderno, who came back to the basilica plan with Latin cross, and realized the scenographic aspect of the façade characterized by the front stairs, the outcropped columns in the masonry, the windows with the loggia of the benedictions at the centre and above the thirteen statues of Jesus, Giovanni Battista and the apostles.
The works of the basilica ended under the Pontificate of Urbano VIII in 1626 AC, but only between 1655 and 1667 AC, on the desire of Alessandro VII, Bernini projected and realized the big portico with columns of the square and put at the centre the obelisk of the I century AC coming from Eliopoli.
The Basilica of St. Peter, nowadays able to welcome 20000 believers, is more than 130 metres high and around 190 metres long, the ceilings of the bays reach almost 44 metres high and the cupola is more or less 120 metres high inside and 136 on the external lantern; the inside, characterized by the large decorations with mosaics, are also the precious box for some of the most famous art works of the work, such as for example the Baldacchino by Bernini and the statue of the Pietà by Michelangelo.