The Vatican, St Peters.

Our trip to The Eternal City to celebrate our 25th Wedding aniversary and my Birthday is becoming a rather tiring affair.
The City is truly a 24hour city, there are crowds of sightseers at all of the main attactions pretty much 24 hours a day.
What yesterdays image of the Trevi fountain doesn't show, is the large crowd gathered in front of the fountain, even at 2 this morning there must have been around 100 people there, taking turns to have there picture taken in front of the fountain.
The same goes for St Peters in todays Blip, the Square in front of the building had crowds of people milling about in St Peters Square, to get a nice clean image of the building i had to move in quite close, too close unfortunately to include the Basilica, i'm going to need a two week holiday to get over this two week holiday.
I'm not as young as i used to be...........

A few facts about the Facade :-

Maderno's facade.

The facade designed by Maderno, is 114.69 metres wide and 45.55 metres high and is built of travertine stone, with a giant order of Corinthian columns and a central pediment rising in front of a tall attic surmounted by thirteen statues: Christ flanked by eleven of the Apostles, except Peter, whose statue is to the left of the stairs and John the Baptist.

The inscription below the cornice on the 1 metre tall frieze reads:

IN HONOREM PRINCIPIS APOST PAVLVS V BVRGHESIVS ROMANVS PONT MAX AN MDCXII PONT VII

Translation:-

"In honour of the Prince of Apostles, Paul V Borghese, a Roman, Supreme Pontiff, in the year 1612, the seventh of his pontificate."

Larger image............

j.