St Peter's facade, the Benediction Loggia and the two clocks

St Peter’s facade is one of those things you’ve seen so often in photos that you stop seeing it. You walk down Via della Conciliazione with it straight ahead for ten minutes, and once you’re in the square all you look at is the queue. I think it deserves a proper look, because it holds the balcony where every pope is presented, thirteen huge statues and two clocks with an odd story. Here’s what the Holy See says about it, and how I’d take it in.

Maderno and a tricky brief

The facade is Carlo Maderno’s work, built between 1607 and 1614 for Paul V. The first stone went in on 11 February 1608, and the pope’s name fills the frieze inscription, eighty metres of letters over a metre high. It’s travertine, 116 metres wide and 45.50 high without the statues, with columns 27.48 metres tall.

Maderno had a hard job. He lengthened the nave by two bays, as the state’s own website notes, and put a very wide front on it, and in my view the result comes at a price. Up close, the facade hides a good part of the dome. That’s why I look at it from halfway across the square, or better still from Via della Conciliazione, where the whole thing gets its proportions back. Why the church ended up so long is explained under St Peter’s Basilica architecture.

After 1667 Bernini altered it and cut the steps back to the central section, which had previously run the full width. It was fully restored for the Jubilee of 2000.

Thirteen statues and no St Peter

Along the top stand thirteen statues. In the middle is Christ the Redeemer, six metres with his cross. Either side are John the Baptist and eleven apostles, each 5.65 metres. The Milanese sculptor Ambrogio Buonvicino made them, along with the Giving of the Keys relief over the central door, between 1612 and 1614.

One is missing, and not by accident. St Peter isn’t on the front of his own basilica. He has a colossal marble statue at the foot of the steps, on the left, placed there in 1847, and a bronze one inside the nave. It makes a good pub-quiz question for whoever you’re travelling with.

Which balcony does the pope use?

The central one on the upper storey, the Benediction Loggia. It hasn’t always been there. For a long time a temporary wooden pulpit was put up in front of the basilica for big ceremonies, and it was Pius II who began a loggia in the 15th century. The one you see now was designed by Maderno and first used on 13 May 1611, for the Ascension blessing.

After each conclave the senior cardinal deacon names the new pope from here, and every Christmas and Easter the pope blesses the crowd Urbi et Orbi. There’s one date I love. On 6 February 1922 the newly elected Pius XI gave his first blessing from here, something that hadn’t happened since 1870, under Pius IX. Half a century without a pope stepping out to bless the square from that spot.

A warning, to save you a wasted wait. The Sunday Angelus isn’t said from this balcony but from a window of the Apostolic Palace, on the right of the square. If you want to see the pope in the loggia, you need to be here for Christmas at the Vatican or for Easter.

Two clocks and six bells

At the corners of the attic are two almost identical clocks, each with a pair of angels holding up the papal tiara. Luigi Valadier and his son Giuseppe made them between 1786 and 1790, under Pius VI, in place of two bell towers that had been started and then had to be demolished. The south clock tells time the way we do. The northern dial has just one hand and keeps the old Italian reckoning, which started the day at dusk, so hour twenty-four arrived with the following sunset. Electricity has driven them since 1957.

The bells hang in the southern opening of the attic, on the left. There are six, dating from 1353 to 1932, and the biggest is known as the ‘campanone’. When all six ring together, the so-called plenum, they confirm the smoke was white and there’s a new pope. They also ring out for the Gloria at the Easter Vigil and at Midnight Mass, for the Urbi et Orbi and on 29 June after the Angelus.

How I’d look at it

I’d start far back, on Via della Conciliazione, to see the facade with the dome above it. Then I’d stand beside the obelisk in St Peter’s Square and pick out the loggia, the thirteen statues and the clocks. And I’d come back at night, because it looks far better lit and the square empties. For what’s behind the doors, from the Pietà to the dome, my guide to St Peter’s Basilica has the hours, the queues and what not to miss.