Nothing quite surpasses the grandeur of the Eternal City this time of year and it is difficult to recall a single person who has had a greater influence on the look and life of a city than Baroque genius Gian Lorenzo Bernini has had on Rome.
Sculptor, urban planner, architect, master of stagecraft and gesture, Bernini engenders awe in the beholder with his exuberant style.
Connecting the Eternal City to Vatican City is the Pont Sant’ Angelo, one of the most serenely beautiful bridges in the world. Bernini designed it as a “living” Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) to help pilgrims emotionally experience in the suffering of Jesus.
Bernini was able to transcend his preferred medium of marble to achieve visual and emotive effects never before imagined. A visit to the Borghese Gallery for me is always a “must” when in Rome. The astonishing Apollo and Daphne, Rape of Proserpina, and his David were all completed before he was 25 years old!
From 1667 on, pilgrims to St. Peter’s arrive at the grand elliptical piazza with its two burbling fountains and an Egyptian obelisk standing at its center and at the far end the façade of monumental Basilica. The piazza itself is encircled by two colossal Doric colonnades four columns deep with a total of 140 statues of saints lining it’s rooftop. This momentous piece of urban planning and architecture was the product of Bernini’s imagination; figuratively speaking he designed his colonnade to embrace pilgrims with in his words, “the maternal arms of mother church”
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