(upbeat funky music) - [Narrator] We're standing
in the magnificent piazza designed by Bernini in the 17th century in front of the Basilica of St. Peter's in the Vatican in Rome. - [Narrator] The piazza
is filled with chairs and people exiting after Pope
Francis gave an audience. - [Narrator] And that's exactly
the purpose of this piazza, this grand public space
designed by Bernini, to hold vast numbers of
people who would come here to see the pope. - [Narrator] This site on Vatican Hill, across the Tiber from central Rome, had held the ancient Roman
circus of the Emperor Nero and it was here that St. Peter was buried, and around his grave was
built the great early church, the first St. Peter's built
by Emperor Constantine. - [Narrator] The church we
refer to as the old St. Peter's, and this is a church
that dates to the time of the High Renaissance to the early 1500s to the patronage of Pope Julius II who is also responsible for
other amazing things here like commissioning Michelangelo
to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or commissioning Raphael to paint frescoes in the stanza here in the Papal Palace. Bernini's piazza dates to
more than 100 years later. - [Narrator] A lot had taken
place during that 100 years. Most significantly Martin Luther sparks the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church
responds with what is known as the Counter-Reformation. This piazza is central to understanding Counter-Reformation architecture. - [Narrator] The church
recognized that art could be used to inspire the faithful and this piazza reaches
out to do just that. In fact those are Bernini's words. He said, "These are the
motherly arms of the church, "reaching out to embrace the faithful "and to reunite heretics with the church," and those heretics that
Bernini was referring to are the Protestants. Those Christians who broke
away from the authority of the pope in Rome in the 16th century. - [Narrator] 500 years later
these double colonnades are still embracing the faithful as we saw earlier today. The geometry of the space
is clearly no longer the idealized geometry
of the High Renaissance. This is not squares and circles. We're now seeing ovals or
ellipses and trapezoids. This is a more dynamic
and more complex geometry. - [Narrator] Well, think about it. Here we have, as we
look across the piazza, the High Renaissance church
as designed by Bramante and then redesigned by
Michelangelo and Raphael, but that's a church that stands alone. What Bernini did was activate the church so that it no longer was static, but something that
moved out into the space in front of the church, moved out into the space of the viewer, and reached out to embrace us. - [Narrator] In fact the piazza
reaches out into the city. It creates a transitional space between the secular space of the city and the spiritual space of the Basilica. - [Narrator] What we
have essentially are two in a way arms or wings that reach out from the church itself, and those open up into
this vast oval space at the center of which
is an ancient obelisk -- - [Narrator] From Egypt. - [Narrator] And two gorgeous fountains sparkling with water on either side. - [Narrator] This creates
a longitudinal axis that perfectly incorporates
this existing architecture. - [Narrator] This oval is
comprised of a colonnade that is four rows of columns that are massive in scale. - [Narrator] These are made
of drums of travertine, round drums of stone that are stacked up one atop the other. - [Narrator] They are in the Tuscan order. That is they are very simple and unfluted. They're not decorated
with those vertical lines that we see in the Doric
order, for example, and for me what that does
is it keeps the space of the piazza simple and
focuses our attention on the facade of the
Basilica of St. Peters. - [Narrator] The whiteness
of the travertine of Bernini's columns makes
my eyes more sensitive to the multiple colors
that we see in Maderno's facade of the Basilica. - [Narrator] If we follow
the colonnades around to the very end, we wee that they end in
very simple temple fronts. They look like ancient Greek temples with columns carrying a frieze and a pediment above that. Very simple to create this
vast, welcoming public space. - [Narrator] A space that
is a perfect synthesis of symbolism and utility. (upbeat funky music)