Shelly and Ryan arrived yesterday . Touring Rome

We have been looking forward to our daughter Shelly and her husband coming to visit us.  They arrived yesterday. We picked them up in Rome along with their friend's Christy and Scott. We stayed the night all together last night in a nice apartment and we showed them all around Rome, at least what you can see in one and a half days.

We got settled in our apartment and then we took the bus and the train and the metro down to see the Vatican.  We didn't have to wait in line too long and we got right in to see St Peters Basilica.  It is huge.  Something like 2 football fields long and the dome is a football field high.  The church covers 6 acres.

Michelangelo was commissioned to be the architect when he was 71 years old.  They replaced the old St. Peter's church which was in the same spot from AD 329-1500.  It was built where The Apostle Peter was killed and buried.   They built the new church around the old one and when it was finished 120 years later, they dismantled the old church and took it out the front doors.  

The huge square in front of the church has 284 columns each 56 feet high.  There are 140 statues of favorite saints on top of the columns and they are each 10 feet tall.  

Inside the basilica, there is the famous and incredibly breathtaking Piata which was sculpted by Michelangelo when he was quite young.

This is a picture looking up into the dome above the alter where Peter is buried.  The ring of gold letters at the base of the dome are 7 feet high and give the scripture about Christ saying that upon this rock he will build his church.

There are tons of statues inside this huge church.  It holds 60,000 people standing.  We arrived too late to get into the Sistine Chapel.  We tried some wonderful gelato after the tour of St. Peters.  Yum!