Pope Alexander VII Chigi commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1656 to give the forecourt of St. Peter’s Basilica a definitive urban form. Working until 1667, Bernini drew an elliptical piazza some 240 metres across (the ovato tondo) and enclosed it with two curving wings of free-standing colonnade in the Tuscan order, four columns deep. The whole assembly counts 248 columns and 88 pilasters, crowned by an entablature and a balustrade carrying 140 over-lifesize statues of saints sculpted by Bernini’s workshop. The architect described the two arms as reaching out to embrace the faithful arriving in the city.

At the centre of the ellipse stands the Vatican Obelisk, a red granite monolith 25.5 metres high (41 metres including base and cross) brought from Heliopolis to Rome in antiquity and set on the spina of the Circus of Nero just south of the basilica. In 1586 Pope Sixtus V charged the engineer-architect Domenico Fontana with moving it to its present position, an operation that made the obelisk the only one in Rome never to have toppled since classical times. Carlo Maderno’s fountain of 1613 was matched by a twin designed by Bernini in 1675 on the opposite side, balancing the composition. Discs set into the pavement in 1817 mark the tip of the obelisk’s noon shadow at each sign of the zodiac.

The square remains the principal liturgical and ceremonial stage of the Catholic Church. The reigning pope delivers the Sunday Angelus from a window of the Apostolic Palace, holds general audiences here on Wednesdays, and presides over canonizations, Easter and Christmas blessings urbi et orbi, and conclave announcements from the central loggia of the basilica. The colonnade and the basilica facade together form one of the most photographed architectural ensembles in Europe and a continuous point of arrival for pilgrims and visitors to Vatican City.