VATICAN CITY (dpa) – If you visit the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome early in the morning before the throngs of visitors arrive, you might catch sight of a distinguished gentleman in his mid-40s taking his usual early tour around the cathedral.
Every day just before 8 a.m. he walks from the Stuart Mausoleum to the nave. He pauses at Michelangelo’s Pieta before going out to the portal and lighting a cigarette to enjoy the view over St. Peter’s Square.Only early in the morning does art historian Alfredo Maria Pergolizzi find the peace he needs for a tour of the largest Christian house of God in the world, which is visited by countless pilgrims and tourists each day.Even if religion does not have the same significance it once had in western society, a trip here is still a dream for many visitors to Italy.“Oh, dreams,” sighed Pergolizzi. “People have lost the art of dreaming. Only the few who can still dream will find a place for their dreams here.”Whenever this eloquent art historian describes the Basilica he turns to quotations from Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, Goethe or Schiller.For Pergolizzi, to talk about St. Peter’s Basilica is to talk about philosophy. “You have to conquer the Basilica, gradually and piece by piece,” he says. No one, really no one, can say they have truly seen this Basilica if they have only been in and out of it.Yet most visitors do little more: they stream in with the masses and make the usual tour, perhaps with a tour guide, to Michelangelo’s Pieta, to the bronze figure of St. Peter enthroned, the papal altar and the grotto.“Very few visitors can really understand the Basilica,” Pergolizzi complains.Indeed, there is too much for the eye to behold: when the French author Stendhal looked at the Basilica he is said to have fallen into an entranced state of mind – today people still talk of Stendhal Syndrome.If you look closely, you can still see part of the original church on this site, the Constantine Basilica, particularly on some marble columns and in the Vatican grottos.The Basilica was dedicated nearly a century after Emperor Constantine conferred freedom of worship on Christians in 313. Emperors were crowned in this brick cathedral with an enormous atrium until the 15th century.In the 16th century Pope Julius II decided to build an even larger and more impressive cathedral. The Constantine Basilica was demolished in 1506 and famous architects and artists were engaged to build a new one: Donato Bramante, Raffaello Sanzio, Michelangelo Buonarroti. Before Gian Lorenzo Bernini made his artistic mark on all Rome, he was first engaged at the age of 25 in building St. Peter’s.The construction nearly brought Bernini’s career to an early end when the foundation of one of the domes threatened to collapse. His masters accused him of lacking experience. Only with luck and after he demolished the dome at his own expense, was Bernini able to keep his contract.“You have to read the Basilica,” says Alfredo Maria Pergolizzi. St. Peter’s Basilica is a complete book of the occident – its art, politics and spirit, he says. “Read the basilica like literature. Do not just stay on the surface, delve into its depths.”Just like a book, you first concentrate on the content, then you recognise the structure and finally the psychology of the literary figures.But it should be read not “with the eye of faith” but “with the eye of art,” he says – and with curiosity. Only the curious can understand St. Peter’s and thereby win it for themselves, he says.Yet Pergolizzi himself claims he has long given up his attempt. He has not been able to conquer St. Peter’s. “No, the Basilica has conquered me,” he says. “I have long been its prisoner.”Information: The Pilgrims Office in the Vatican tel. + 39/06/689 17 97 And in the Internet at http://www.vatican.va
