View Page: St. Peter's Piazza

	St. Peter's Piazza
	written by minhan / 09.22.2005

Section Four

4 of 7

Patron

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Pope Alexander VII

Picture of the patron of the redesigning of St. Peter's Piazza.

Before Pope Alexander VII and the building of St. Peter’s Piazza, nepotism and the Castro War had resulted in the weakening of the prestige of the papacy and reputation of the popes. The middle of the seventeenth century, during the time of Pope Alexander VII, marked a time of great economic decline and loss of population due to a major plague and malaria epidemic. The national debt had risen to 48 million scudi. However, Rome was still able to remain the center of the Catholic world, the primary place of Christian pilgrimage, and played a role in the culmination of the High Baroque art.

Pope Alexander VII was greeted with much joy and high hopes during his coronation. He was admired for his political experience and wisdom, and his modesty and integrity. He was very caring towards the poor, he would spend six to seven hours a day in audience to welcome and comfort the poor. However, his weakness was that he was not firm in his decisions and relied on the advice of others too much. This caused many abuses in the legal administration, contributing to the financial problems and the public’s complaints about the papacy and its authority. However, through all the problems the pope was facing, his great commitment to St. Peter made him hold in very high regard the task of completing the decoration of St. Peter’s and the remodeling of the open space in front of the basilica.

The task had been on the agenda of other popes but it was not until patron Pope Alexander VII that anything would be accomplished. Before the redesigning, the north end of the open area was very irregular, the south border had a “row of mean houses,” and the east end was filled with unsymmetrical clustering of buildings. The pope did not find the setting to be an appropriate place for faithful pilgrims to come and receive the blessing of the pope. Also the basilica’s façade was known to have awkward proportions, being too long for its height, but with the help of a clever design of the surrounding area, the problem was corrected. Exactly what the pope had hoped for, the redesigning of the piazza to fully honor St. Peter’s revitalized the papacy and the faith of the people.

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