St. Peter's Basilica The view of the interior of St. Peter's from just inside the entrance. The circle in the foreground is the site of Charlemagne's coronation in 800 A.D. The bright spot on the far wall is a window. It is more than six hundred feet from the camera, making this the largest church in Christendom. This shot is a little better for perspective than this shot, where I mentioned that the scale of the church was difficult to relate in a photograph. Here, the tiny people make the scale more apparent. Still, it is difficult to comprehend how huge the church is -- for example, the black canopy at the far end in this photograph, which looks small, is the Baldacchino. It rises as high as a seven-story building above the altar. It was commission by Pope Urban VIII in 1624 and designed by Bernini. Saint Peter, after whom the church is named, was buried in 64 A.D. near the site of his crucifixion in the Circus of Nero. Constantine built St. Peter's Basilica in 324 A.D. with the altar directly above the necropolis where Saint Peter was buried, so the ruins of the Circus of Nero lie beneath the church. However, the existing structure is not the same as the original building. When Rome fell, the church drifted into disrepair. It was rebuilt in the 15th century, and throughout the 16th and 17th centuries various artists and architects developed the structure as it is today. LENS: 17-35 at ~17mm | FILM: Fuji Provia 100F | EXPOSURE: f/2.8 at 1/8" | DATE: 10/03 |