St. Peter's Square

The draw

Bernini turned a forecourt into an argument, and you can stand on the spot where it works. Turismo Roma calls Piazza San Pietro the heart of world Christianity and credits its characteristic elliptical form to Bernini's colonnade — 284 columns set radially in four rows, on its account, over eleven years of work from 1656 to 1667. The reference work counts differently (248 columns and 88 pilasters, with 140 over-lifesize saints crowning the cornice) and dates the redesign 1667 to 1676. At the centre stands an Egyptian obelisk of red granite, over 25 metres and nearly 40 with base and cross, which the reference work says was originally erected at Heliopolis by an unknown pharaoh and moved here in 1586 by Domenico Fontana.

The friction

It is rarely empty and sometimes impassable. The security queue for the basilica forms across the square, so the piazza is often full of a line that is not there for the piazza. Sunday at noon the square fills for the Angelus; Wednesday mornings carry the papal audience. There is also no shade anywhere on it.

The tactic

Find the roundels before you do anything else. Two round stones are set into the paving either side of the obelisk, a few metres out from the compass rose. Stand on one and the four rows of the colonnade line up into a single file. Nobody is charged for this, almost nobody looks for it, and it is the clearest thing Bernini ever did.

Skip it if you:

• Are here for the Angelus but hate crowds. Sunday noon is the single busiest moment in the square's week.
• Arrive at midday in summer. It is a treeless stone oval and there is nowhere to stand out of the sun.
• Think of it as the queue for the basilica. Walking the colonnade and standing on the roundel takes twenty minutes and is a separate thing worth doing.

This is another country, and it behaves like one. The square is Vatican territory with its own police and its own rules; security screening and bag checks are not theatre.

Sunday noon is a religious act, not a show. Turismo Roma describes the crowd gathering for the Angelus and the papal blessing. Visitors are welcome in it; talking through it with a camera up is the thing to avoid.

Do not climb on the fountains or the obelisk base. The obelisk is an Egyptian monument that has been standing for several thousand years and was moved here in 1586; the fountains date from 1613 and 1675.

Keep the colonnade walkable. It is the only shade on the square and in summer it is also the route for people who cannot stand in the open sun.

Open, free, and occasionally full

The square is a public space with no admission, no ticket and no closing time. What varies is how many people are in it.

Sunday at noon — Turismo Roma records that a large crowd gathers for the Angelus Domini and the Pope's blessing. The square fills.

Wednesday mornings carry the papal audience, which changes how the square is laid out and fenced.

The rest of the time the obstacle is somebody else's queue. Security screening for the basilica forms a line that runs out across the piazza, so the square can look impassable when the square itself is not. Walk round the line; you do not need to join it unless you are going into the church.

Admission

Free. No price is published and none is expected.

What is free

All of it, including the one thing worth coming for. The roundels are two stones in the pavement and standing on them costs nothing; so does walking the full curve of the colonnade, which is shaded and almost always quieter than the open centre.

Also free: the view back down Via della Conciliazione, and — the detail most people miss — the fact that Michelangelo's dome only reads properly from a distance, because Maderno's 115-metre facade hides it as you get close. Walk away from the basilica to see it.

How long

About 30 minutes: ten for the colonnade, five on the roundels, and the rest standing still.

Early morning, for an empty square and a long shadow. The piazza is open at all hours and at seven in the morning it is nearly deserted, with the colonnade throwing its columns in a long raking line across the paving. That light is also when the four-rows-into-one trick is easiest to see.

Avoid Sunday noon and Wednesday morning unless the Angelus or the audience is why you came — Turismo Roma notes the Sunday crowd explicitly.

And avoid midday in summer outright. There is no shade on the square at all: the only cover is inside the colonnade itself, which is why it is full of people standing against the columns in August.

After dark the facade and the dome are lit and the square empties. It is one of the few major sights in Rome that is as good at ten at night as at ten in the morning, and free at both.