St. Peter's Basilica ~ Vatican City ~ Part 8

I am going to post nearly all the photos I took inside St. Peter's. This basilica is opulent beyond belief and spectacular in every nook and cranny (and there are many). Much of it dates from 1506, and I thought to myself how truly amazing it is that people back then had the technical knowledge necessary to build something like this. Of course, I thought that about nearly everything I saw in Rome and Florence. We in America have the tendency to think that only we have brought such beauty and architectural genius to the world - and we can believe that even when we have studied European art and architecture in school or on our own in books. It is humbling, I assure you, to finally realize that most of it was here in the world long before we were.

I know that some of these pics are repetitive. It is too hard to decide which ones are best - and so you are getting them all. Everywhere you look inside the basilica there is either a painting, a sculpture, some gilding, marble and ornament of some sort. There is hardly a blank area on any wall or ceiling, unless it is some beautifully patterned and colored marble.

The color of the photos I took inside the building are somewhat muted, but except for the paintings and murals, most of the colors are paler than you might expect. I wonder if that is because some of it has faded over the years?

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