ABSTRACT
Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s design for the piazza, as initially conceived in 1656, is a synthesis of three separate, yet interdependent spatial components along the basilica’s central axis. The first component, closest to the basilica, is the piazza retta. This area is dominated by a vast, flowing stairway and a series of sloped surfaces that flow outward into the piazza and is used primarily as an altar for outdoor masses. Its walls are oblique to the basilica’s façade and provide, like Michelangelo’s Campidoglio, the appearance that the façade is narrower than it is in reality.
