St. Peter's Basilica

The interior of St. Peter's Basilica, Catholicism's most sacred shrine. This is the view down the main corridor, toward the dome. Directly beneath the dome at the end is the Baldacchino, an extravagant Baroque canopy, which stands over the altar and St. Peter's tomb.

The scale of the building is difficult to represent in a photograph, but the church is more than two football fields long and covers six acres. The gold band and lettering above the columns and ringing the base of the dome above the altar is more than six feet high. The capacity of the church is greater than 95,000.

This shot and the others I took of the church interior would be absolutely wonderful to shoot with a large format view camera, but unfortunately that is impossible because tripods are not allowed. Not that I had my view camera with me, anyway. So all of my shots have vertical lines leaning backward like this one. I tried to work with the wide angle distortion instead of against it.

There are a couple of other shots of the Basilica interior, including my favorite, this one, the view from the church entrance and the site of Charlemagne's coronation in 800 A.D.

LENS: 17-35 at ~17mm | FILM: Fuji Provia 100F | EXPOSURE: f/2.8 at 1/8" | DATE: 10/03

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