Saint Peter’s Basilica

One hundred and twenty years. That's how long it took the greatest minds of the Renaissance to complete what you see rising before you in Piazza San Pietro... and they still got it wrong the first time. When Pope Julius II demolished Constantine's ancient basilica in 1506, Romans rioted in the streets, furious that the church built over Saint Peter's tomb in 329 AD was being torn down. But Julius had a vision... a Greek cross crowned by a dome that would dwarf even the Roman Pantheon. Here's what most visitors never notice. As you stand facing that magnificent façade, you're actually looking at the newest part of a building whose heart beats four centuries old. Walk through those bronze doors, and the entire interior transforms... Michelangelo's double-shelled dome soars 138 meters above you, held aloft by four gargantuan piers so massive they began cracking under their own weight. The master was seventy-one when appointed chief architect in 1546, and he never lived to see his dome completed. The construction of that dome took just two years... 1588 to 1590... workers hoisting lead plates on pulleys while standing on wooden scaffolding hundreds of feet in the air. Twenty thousand souls can gather beneath this roof at once, all standing where emperors and apostles once walked.