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Basilica: The Splendour and the Scandal - Building St. Peter's

Out of the clash of genius and the caprice of popes was born Rome's most glorious monument.

It was the splendour - and the scandal - of the age. In 1506, the ferociously ambitious Renaissance Pope Julius II tore down the most sacred shrine in Europe - the millennium-old St. Peter's Basilica built by the Emperor Constantine over the apostle's grave - to build a better basilica. Construction of the new St. Peter's spanned two centuries, embroiled 27 popes and consumed the genius of the greatest artists of the age, including Michelangelo, Bramante, Raphael and Bernini. As the basilica rose, modern Rome rose with it as glorious as the city of the Caesars. But the cost was unimaginable. The new basilica provoked the Protestant Reformation, dividing the Christian world for all time. In this swift, colourful narrative, R.A. Scotti brings to life the artists and the popes, the politics and the passions behind this audacious enterprise.

Gothic cathedrals reach up to heaven, but the basilica brings heaven to earth, and the new St. Peter's was the defining event of the high Renaissance.