"On pousse avec peine une grosse portière de cuir, et nous voici dans Saint-Pierre. On ne peut qu'adorer la religion qui produit de telles choses. Rien du monde ne peut être comparé à l'intérieur de Saint Pierre. Après un an de séjour à Rome, j'y allais encore passer des heures entières avec plaisir."—Fontana, Tempio Vaticano Illustrato.
"Tandis que, dans les églises gothiques, l'impression est de s'agenouiller, de joindre les mains avec un sentiment d'humble prière et de profond regret; dans Saint-Pierre au contraire, le mouvement involontaire serait d'ouvrir les bras en signe de joie, de relever la tête avec bonheur et épanouissement. Il semble, que là, le péché n'accable plus; le sentiment vif du pardon par le triomphe de la résurrection remplit seul le cœur."—Eugénie de la Ferronays.
"The temperature of St. Peter's seems, like the happy islands, to experience no change. In the coldest weather it is like summer to your feelings, and in the most oppressive heats it strikes you with a delightful sensation of cold—a luxury not to be estimated but in a climate such as this."—Eaton's Rome.
On each side of the nave are four pillars with Corinthian pilasters, and a rich entablature supporting the arches. The roof is vaulted, coffered, and gilded. The pavement is of coloured marble, inlaid from designs of Giacomo della Porta and Bernini. In the centre of the floor, immediately within the chief entrance, is a round slab of porphyry, upon which the emperors were crowned.
The enormous size of the statues and ornaments in St. Peter's do away with the impression of its vast size, and it is only by observing the living, moving figures, that one can form any idea of its colossal proportions. A line in the pavement is marked with the comparative size of the other great Christian churches. According to this the length of St Peter's is 613½ feet; of St. Paul's, London, 520½ feet; Milan Cathedral, 443 feet; St. Sophia, Constantinople, 360½ feet. The height of the dome in the interior is 405 feet; on the exterior, 448 feet. The height of the baldacchino is 94½ feet.
The first impulse will be to go up to the shrine, around which a circle of eighty-six gold lamps is always burning, and to look down into the Confessional, where there is a beautiful kneeling statue of Pope Pius VI. (Braschi, 1785—1800) by Canova. Hence one can gaze up into the dome, with its huge letters in purple-blue mosaic upon a gold ground (each six feet long).[331] "Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram ædificabo ecclesiam meam, et tibi dabo claves regni cœlorum." Above this are four colossal mosaics of the Evangelists from designs of the Cav. d'Arpino; the pen of St. Luke is seven feet in length.
"The cupola is glorious, viewed in its design, its altitude, or even its decorations; viewed either as a whole or as a part, it enchants the eye, it satisfies the taste, it expands the soul. The very air seems to eat up all that is harsh or colossal, and leaves us nothing but the sublime to feast on:—a sublime peculiar as the genius of the immortal architect, and comprehensible only on the spot."—Forsyth.
"Ce dôme, en le considérant même d'en bas, fait éprouver une sorte de terreur; on croit voir des abîmes suspendus sur sa tête."—Madame de Staël.
The Baldacchino, designed by Bernini in 1633, is of bronze, with gilt ornaments, and was made chiefly with bronze taken from the roof of the Pantheon. It covers the high altar, which is only used on the most solemn occasions. Only the pope can celebrate mass there, or a cardinal who is authorised by a papal brief.
"Without a sovereign priest officiating before and for his people, St. Peter's is but a grand aggregation of splendid churches, chapels, tombs, and works of art. With him, it becomes a whole, a single, peerless temple, such as the world never saw before. That central pile, with its canopy of bronze as lofty as the Farnese Palace, with its deep-diving stairs leading to a court walled and paved with precious stones, that yet seems only a vestibule to some cavern or catacomb, with its simple altar that disdains ornament in the presence of what is beyond the reach of human price,—that which in truth forms the heart of the great body, placed just where the heart should be, is then animated, and surrounded by living and moving sumptuousness. The immense cupola above it, ceases to be a dome over a sepulchre, and becomes a canopy over an altar; the quiet tomb beneath is changed into the shrine of relics below the place of sacrifice—the saints under the altar;—the quiet spot at which a few devout worshippers at most times may be found, bowing under the hundred lamps, is crowded by rising groups, beginning from the lowest step, increasing in dignity and in richness of sacred robes, till, at the summit and in the centre, stands supreme the pontiff himself, on the very spot which becomes him, the one living link in a chain, the first ring of which is rivetted to the shrine of the Apostles below.... St. Peter's is only itself when the pope is at the high altar, and hence only by, or for, him it is used."—Cardinal Wiseman.