The facade of St. Peter's Basilica. See how tiny the people are in front of it?

The obelisk in St.Peter's Square, just outside the basilica is from Heliopolis, Egypt... about a fifteen minute drive from where I live in Ghamra.

Me with the Heliopolis obelisk and one of the colonnades designed by Bernini in the background.

Statue of St. Peter in front of the basilica.

Me with the statue of St. Peter

The clock tower on the left side of the facade.

St. Peter's Basilica from the square. This is a much better view of the dome.

One of the two sets of colonnades that surrounds St. Peter's Square.

One of the colonades from a distance as the crowd was gathering to hear the Pope deliver his Sunday morning address.

The Pope!!!

The Pope's Swiss Guard paraded in before the Pope spoke, and out again after he finished. Rumor has it that Michelangelo designed their uniforms.

Those guys have pikes! YIKES!!!

The ruins of an old mausoleum on the Appian Way.

An old, OLD church on the Appian Way.

This church, which sits on the side of the Appian Way, is on a site where Jesus appeared to Peter as he was fleeing Rome. Inside there is a piece of marble that has the supposed footprints of Jesus embedded in it.

We later learned that the statues on the top edge of the facade of St. Peter's Basilica are 30 feet tall. Imagine a six-foot person standing next to them.

Me inside Vatican City awaiting the begining of the SCAVI tour, which took us deep below the main floor of St. Peter's to the tomb of St. Peter himself.

A Roman statue in the Vatican Museum of a boy strangling a goose.

A statue of Nike.

The corridors of the Vatican Museums were filled with ancient treasures.

A Roman sculpture of Atalanta. Where are her golden apples?

In the "Map Room" there were endless amounts of frescoed maps on the walls. Yes, frescoes... that means they can't be moved... it's painted directly on the wall, effectively making the museum itself a piece of art. This map was of Sicily.

The cielings of the hallways were covered with frescoes. You could literally spend weeks in the Vatican Museums and never see all the artwork.

Here's a detail of only one of the paintings on the cieling.

I thought this painting of a woman holding John the Baptist's head was beautiful despite it's shocking subject matter.

This is another detail of a ceiling. It's Judith holding the head of Holofernes.

This domed room had incredible paintings of angels smiting demons.

This ceiling detail had an Egyptian influence. Do you see the painting of the pink pharaoh on the left. Moses is on the right with horns. Some depictions of Moses show him with horns because once upon a time there was a mistranslation of the Bible that said Moses had horns. Today we know that the correct translation says his face was shining.

This red brick in St. Peter's square marks the place where there was an attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II.

Just under the right arch of St. Peter's Basilica, there was a statue of the only female pope, Pope Joan. It turns out they didn't know she was female until she suddenly gave birth as she was walking down the streets of Rome. Oops. The church later condemned her to death. The question that remains is... why is there a sculpture of her on the most important church in Catholicism... the church hat doesn't allow women to even be a priest?

The interior of St. Peter's Basilica. If you have a copy of the book "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown, this is pretty much the photo on the front cover. Just under the three bright windows is a gold strip with black lettering. You may be able to make out the word "CAELORUM." The letters are ten feet tall.

Michaelangelo's Pieta.

Me with the Pieta in the background.

This is a statue of the man who created the Jesuit order, Ignatius of Loyola. Under his foot is Martin Luther biting his finger.

I remember studying the baldacchino of St. Peter's in college but it looked to be about 10 feet tall in my textbook. Imagine my surprise when I saw that it was about 3 stories tall. The baldacchino is the dark structure covering the altar where the nave and the transcept meet.

On the far wall behind the baldacchino was something that looked like stain glass lit from behind. It turned out it was very thinly sliced pieces of stone that were lit from behind. They formed the image of a dove.