San Pietro in Vincoli - Monday, First Week of Lent

San Pietro in Vincoli - in English, St. Peter in Chains - is a fascinating place. From the piazza outside it is difficult to recognize as a church; it appears to be piazza with a colonnade. The interior is unmistakably a church, with its central nave and columns. Nevertheless, its appearance is relatively unremarkable. However, there are some remarkable things about this church that put it high on the list of churches to visit in Rome. And its proximity to the Colosseum - a third of the distance between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument in Washington DC - surely moves it up on the must-see sights.

San Pietro in Vincoli houses the Moses of Michelangelo. Although not as tall as Michelangelo's David, the seated figure sits at a height of over 11 feet, and is carved on the same scale. The hands that hold the beard of Moses are the same hands of the David, and the mass of folds that make up his garment recall those of the Pieta in Saint Peter's. Like all of Rome, the church can get crowded during the height of the tourist season in summer, but in the off-season months you can spend time virtually alone in front of this true masterpiece.

Moses was intended as a sculpture to adorn the tomb of Pope Julius II, the formidable Pope of the early Renaissance in Rome. He was Pope during the time of Columbus, he brought Michelangelo to Rome and hired him to paint the Sistine Ceiling, and he died the same year Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. The Pope is interred here in this church, for it was his church before he became Pope.

The name of the church, Saint Peter in Chains, refers to the chains that held Peter during his imprisonment in Rome. The links of these chains are displayed under the altar, and versions of the story hold that the chain is actually composed of the links of chains from when Peter was imprisoned in Jerusalem, also. When the links from Jerusalem were brought to Rome and placed in proximity to those from his Roman imprisonment, the two actually fused, resulting in the chain seen today.

This is one of the more accessible churches to the casual visitor of Rome, and I would encourage adding this to the list of one's visits to Rome.

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San Pietro in Vincoli, Google Maps

San Pietro in Vincoli, Google Street View

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