The Basilic of san Pedro is the important basilic in this State.
The postcard has a photo of 1900.
"The history of St. Peter's Basilica begins in the 4th century when Emperor Constantine decided to build a basilica where the apostle had been buried. In 329 the construction of the basilica was completed. The church was used for the celebration of the cult, as a covered cemetery and as a room for funeral banquets. During the High Middle Ages it was the main pilgrimage site in the West. The archaeological excavations carried out under the current basilica, the descriptions, drawings and old paintings, give us an idea of ??what the first Vatican basilica was like. In 1506 Julio II began the construction of a new basilica to replace the existing one, entrusting the project to the architect Donato Bramante. Bramante proposes a Greek cross plan (four equal arms), like the Byzantine churches of the 9th century. When Bramante died in 1514, the works passed to Rafael Sanzio and various proposals were discussed until 1521. Rafael died in 1520 and construction continued with Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who in 1538 finalized his project for the basilica. In 1546, when Antonio da Sangallo passed away, the architect appointed was Michelangelo Buonarroti who will give the final shape to the design, simplifying the plan by eliminating the sacristies with towers at the corners of the square designed by Bramante; This transformed the outer limits of the area into a continuous enveloping wall giving unity and coherence to the volume of the building. Michelangelo reinforced the structure since the axis of his idea was the erection of an imposing banked dome, over an important drum, which would rise considerably higher than Bramante's original proposal. Its construction was completed twenty-four years after his death by Domingo Fontana and Jacobo de la Porta. The latter was in charge of completing Michelangelo's project and when he died in 1602, all that remained was to erect the façade and design the square. Pope Paul V decides to extend the church to the front with the architect Carlo Maderno, transforming Bramante's Greek cross plan into a Latin cross plan, traditional in Western churches. Maderno extends the vault of the front arm, placing on both sides a series of chapels covered with oval domes and on the outside the wall designed by Michelangelo continues, highlighting the front with large attached columns. The front was built between 1607 and 1612. In 1624, Juan Lorenzo Bernini, is called to make the baldachin that constitutes the main altar and that by tradition should be located in the center of the cross, over the tomb of the Apostle Peter, task completed in 1633. Since Maderno's death in 1629, Bernini took charge of the interior decoration of the entire church, giving it its current appearance."
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