You're on the wide, straight boulevard that runs from the basilica down toward the river. It gives you that famous, uninterrupted view of the dome. And it was a mistake — or at least, it undid something Bernini designed on purpose.
For centuries, there was no grand approach here. This whole area was a dense, tangled medieval neighborhood called the Borgo, with a spine of buildings running right down the middle. To reach St. Peter's, you squeezed through tight, dark, crooked lanes — and then, suddenly, the alley opened and the enormous square exploded into view all at once. Bernini counted on that shock. The cramped streets were the setup; the reveal was the punchline.
That vanished neighborhood had a thousand years of its own. The name Borgo comes from the old word for a fortified town — the same root as the English "borough" — and it grew up as the pilgrims' quarter, crammed with inns and hospices for the millions who walked here from across Europe to reach Peter's tomb. There was a
whole English enclave, a Saxon quarter, Frisians and Franks, each nation with its own little church and hostel. For centuries this was the landing pad of Christendom, the first thing exhausted pilgrims saw.
Then, in the nineteen-thirties, Mussolini bulldozed the whole spine. He wanted a monumental avenue, a clean straight shot from the river to the dome, grand and imposing and visible from a dis
