(upbeat funky music)
- [Narrator] We're standing in the magnificent piazza
designed by Bernini in the 17th century
in front of the Basilica of St. Peter's
in the Vatican in Rome.
- [Narrator] The piazza is filled with chairs
and people exiting after Pope Francis gave an audience.
- [Narrator] And that's exactly the purpose of this piazza,
this grand public space designed by Bernini,
to hold vast numbers of people who would come here
to see the pope.
- [Narrator] This site on Vatican Hill,
across the Tiber from central Rome,
had held the ancient Roman circus of the Emperor Nero
and it was here that St. Peter was buried,
and around his grave was built the great early church,
the first St. Peter's built by Emperor Constantine.
- [Narrator] The church we refer to as the old St. Peter's,
and this is a church that dates to the time
of the High Renaissance to the early 1500s
to the patronage of Pope Julius II
who is also responsible for other amazing things here
like commissioning Michelangelo to paint the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel
or commissioning Raphael to paint frescoes
in the stanza here in the Papal Palace.
Bernini's piazza dates to more than 100 years later.
- [Narrator] A lot had taken place during that 100 years.
Most significantly Martin Luther
sparks the Protestant Reformation
and the Catholic Church responds with what is known
as the Counter-Reformation.
This piazza is central to understanding
Counter-Reformation architecture.
- [Narrator] The church recognized that art
could be used to inspire the faithful
and this piazza reaches out to do just that.
In fact those are Bernini's words.
He said, "These are the motherly arms of the church,
"reaching out to embrace the faithful
"and to reunite heretics with the church,"
and those heretics that Bernini was referring to
are the Protestants.
Those Christians who broke away from the authority
of the pope in Rome in the 16th century.
- [Narrator] 500 years later these double colonnades
are still embracing the faithful
as we saw earlier today.
The geometry of the space is clearly no longer
the idealized geometry of the High Renaissance.
This is not squares and circles.
We're now seeing ovals or ellipses and trapezoids.
This is a more dynamic and more complex geometry.
- [Narrator] Well, think about it.
Here we have, as we look across the piazza,
the High Renaissance church as designed by Bramante
and then redesigned by Michelangelo and Raphael,
but that's a church that stands alone.
What Bernini did was activate the church
so that it no longer was static,
but something that moved out into the space
in front of the church,
moved out into the space of the viewer,
and reached out to embrace us.
- [Narrator] In fact the piazza reaches out into the city.
It creates a transitional space
between the secular space of the city
and the spiritual space of the Basilica.
- [Narrator] What we have essentially are two
in a way arms or wings that reach out
from the church itself,
and those open up into this vast oval space
at the center of which is an ancient obelisk --
- [Narrator] From Egypt.
- [Narrator] And two gorgeous fountains
sparkling with water on either side.
- [Narrator] This creates a longitudinal axis
that perfectly incorporates this existing architecture.
- [Narrator] This oval is comprised of a colonnade
that is four rows of columns
that are massive in scale.
- [Narrator] These are made of drums of travertine,
round drums of stone that are stacked up
one atop the other.
- [Narrator] They are in the Tuscan order.
That is they are very simple and unfluted.
They're not decorated with those vertical lines
that we see in the Doric order, for example,
and for me what that does is it keeps the space
of the piazza simple and focuses our attention
on the facade of the Basilica of St. Peters.
- [Narrator] The whiteness of the travertine
of Bernini's columns makes my eyes more sensitive
to the multiple colors that we see in Maderno's
facade of the Basilica.
- [Narrator] If we follow the colonnades around
to the very end,
we wee that they end in very simple temple fronts.
They look like ancient Greek temples
with columns carrying a frieze
and a pediment above that.
Very simple to create this vast, welcoming public space.
- [Narrator] A space that is a perfect synthesis
of symbolism and utility.
(upbeat funky music)