Gian Lorenzo Bernini worked on St Peter’s Basilica for more than fifty years. He did not simply add a statue: he remade its interior, its apse, the square in front of it and the staircase leading to the palaces next door.
The result is that today, walking into St Peter’s, much of what you see between the entrance and the far end of the apse is his, and almost nobody knows it while looking at it. This is a guide to the seven works worth hunting down, with the dates checked against the Fabbrica di San Pietro and the order in which it makes sense to meet them.
1 – The colonnade of St Peter’s Square (1656-1667)
Start outside, because that is where Bernini catches you before you even go in.
The colonnade is made of 284 columns arranged in four rows, 16 metres high, closing the square in two curving arms. On top stand 140 statues of saints, each more than three metres tall: the models are Bernini’s, but the sculptures were carried out by his pupils between 1662 and 1703, partly after his death.
The square was completed in 1667, after eleven years of work. Bernini himself explained the shape with the image of the Church’s motherly arms embracing the faithful, and the metaphor has become more famous than the architect.
The thing to do on the spot, and almost nobody does: find the two porphyry discs in the paving on either side of the obelisk. Stand on one of them and look at the colonnade. The four rows of columns line up perfectly and you see only one. It is the point where the geometry reveals itself, and from anywhere else in the square it does not work.
I also cover the square in the portrait of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, where the colonnade is the first of ten works.
2 – The baldachin over the papal altar (1624-1633)
Go in, walk to the centre of the crossing and look up.
The baldachin is the largest thing in bronze the Baroque ever produced: 28.5 metres, the height of a nine-storey building, inside a church. It was commissioned by Urban VIII, built from July 1624 to 1633 and inaugurated on 28 June 1633.
The four twisted columns that hold it up are not a whim: they quote the spiral columns of the old Constantinian basilica, which tradition held came from the Temple of Solomon. Bernini takes an architectural relic and multiplies its scale.
There is a story about the bronze that almost everybody gets wrong, and since it deserves telling in full I have put it in the visiting guide: you will find it in St Peter’s Basilica, in the section on the baldachin. In short: the link with the Pantheon is propaganda, and the truth is more interesting than the legend.
3 – The Cathedra Petri (1656-1666)
Carry on to the far end of the apse. That machine of gilded bronze, clouds and rays is the Cathedra, which the Fabbrica di San Pietro records as finished in 1666 after ten years of work.
It is not a throne: it is a reliquary. Inside is an ancient wooden throne that tradition held to be the apostle’s own chair, decorated with ivory plaques showing the labours of Hercules and with Carolingian ivory friezes from the ninth century. Bernini neither displays it nor hides it: he encases it in a structure that makes it seem lifted by invisible forces.
Above comes the coup de théâtre: the dove of the Holy Spirit in an alabaster window, about twenty metres up, inside a gloria of angels and putti in gilded stucco. It is the only coloured window in the whole basilica.
Two practical things. The Cathedra works with the afternoon light, when the sun comes round to that side: in the morning you will find it dull. And on 22 February, the feast of the Cathedra, the monument is lit with more than a hundred candles.
4 – The St Longinus (1629-1638)
Go back under the dome and look at the four great piers holding it up. Each has a niche with a colossal statue, and each corresponds to a relic. Bernini’s is St Longinus, the centurion who according to the Gospel account pierced Christ’s side.
It is 4.5 metres tall and was completed in May 1638. It belongs to the reordering of the four piers that Urban VIII entrusted to Bernini between 1628 and 1639, but of the four statues only this one is by his own hand: the other three are by other sculptors.
Look at the pose. Longinus stands with his arms flung wide, the spear in one hand, his head thrown back: it is the exact moment he understands who he has just killed. Bernini is not carving the centurion, he is carving the conversion, an inward event, and he makes it visible through a body that opens.
The three statues beside it are by different sculptors and can be taken in with the same glance: it is the most immediate comparison St Peter’s offers between Bernini and his contemporaries.
5 – The tomb of Urban VIII (1628-1647)
In the apse, to the right of the Cathedra, is the tomb of the man who had given him everything.
Urban VIII Barberini sits high up with his hand raised in blessing, in gilded bronze. Below, in white marble, are two allegories, Charity and Justice. Between the pope and the two women is the thing that makes this tomb unlike any other: a life-size skeleton in bronze, writing the pontiff’s name on a scroll.
This is not a decorative skull. It is Death caught at work, in the act of recording that this pope is over. Bernini took almost twenty years over it, from 1628 to 1647, and the formula he invented here, the deceased above and active death below, became the model for papal funerary monuments for a century.
6 – The tomb of Alexander VII (1672-1678)
In the left transept, above a door, is Bernini’s last great work in the basilica, made when he was past seventy: the tomb of Alexander VII Chigi, carried out between 1672 and 1678 from his designs and models, with his pupils collaborating.
The pope kneels in prayer, and beneath him an enormous drape of red marble covers the real door, the one people walk through. From under the drape emerges another gilded skeleton, lifting the cloth with one hand and holding out an hourglass to the pope with the other.
It is the same idea as the tomb of Urban VIII, taken to its limit: here Death does not record, it warns. And it does so through a working door, so that every time someone walks through it the scene reassembles itself.
7 – The Scala Regia (1663-1666)
The last work is not inside the basilica but beside it, and not everyone can see it: the Scala Regia is the monumental entrance to the Vatican Palaces, glimpsed from the portico on the right, but the route itself is restricted.
The problem Bernini had to solve was a thankless one: an existing staircase by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, in a space that narrowed as it climbed and was too tight and too low to be solemn. Between 1663 and 1666, for Alexander VII, he reconfigured it with a forced perspective: the columns shrink in height as you go up and the gap between them and the wall narrows, so the eye reads a gallery far longer and more regular than it is.
It is the cleverest piece of his Roman career and almost nobody mentions it, because it cannot be photographed well and cannot be visited freely. It is worth knowing as you pass through the portico: behind that gate is an optical trick designed four centuries ago and still working perfectly.
In what order to see them
The route that makes sense, if you have a morning:
- Colonnade, from the porphyry discs, before you join the queue.
- Baldachin and St Longinus, which are in the same part of the basilica: raising and lowering your eyes takes in both.
- Cathedra, at the far end, in the afternoon light if you can.
- Tomb of Urban VIII, right of the Cathedra, and tomb of Alexander VII in the left transept, which read as a pair.
- Scala Regia from the portico, on your way out.
For opening times, entry, the dome and the queues, the full guide is St Peter’s Basilica. The other Roman works are in the other two itineraries: Bernini’s works in Rome’s churches, all free to enter, and Bernini’s fountains in Rome. The overall picture is in the portrait of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Practical information
Entry to the basilica is free. You only pay for the climb to the dome and for guided tours. Security checks are at the entrance to the square and the queue depends on the hour: early in the morning or late afternoon you are through in minutes, mid-morning you can stand there for an hour.
The dress code is genuinely enforced: shoulders and knees covered, for men and women alike. Anyone turning up in a vest top or short shorts is stopped at the check, and no cover-ups are lent out.
The Scala Regia is not part of the free visitor route: you see it only obliquely from the portico, or on tours that include the Vatican Palaces area.
If you want somebody to tell you what you are looking at, and to climb the dome as well, the guided tour with the dome climb covers both: the basilica itself stays free, what you are paying for is the 551 steps and the guide.
Details checked on 29 August 2026 on the St Peter’s Basilica website.
Photo credits. The Cathedra: Dnalor 01, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT, from Wikimedia Commons. The St Longinus is by Gary Todd and is in the public domain.
