(Vatican City) A sound and light show on the facade of the largest church in the world: St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome hosted Sunday evening for the first time a spectacular projection on the life of the eponymous apostle.
Posted yesterday at 7:40 a.m.
Entitled Follow me (Seguimi), this eight-minute show will be offered every evening until October 16 to thousands of visitors and pilgrims in order to retrace the major stages in the life of the founder of the Church.
The project required “technological tools capable of enhancing and harmonizing images, sounds and words”, highlighting an iconography inspired by the basilica and the Vatican Museums, the organizers said in a press release.
“All over the world, when we think of Saint Peter, we tend to think of the church and not of the life of the apostle Peter. We would like to accompany the approximately 50,000 people who enter the basilica every day to let them know the history of this place,” Father Francesco Occhetta of the Fratelli Tutti Foundation told AFP.
Peter had been crucified upside down in the years 64-70, in the circus of Caligula, where the Vatican gardens are today, near the basilica.
Designed by Carlo Maderno, the facade of the basilica, 115 m long and 47 m high, is preceded by a staircase designed by Bernini and decorated with eight Corinthian columns.
In December 2015, a similar sound and light show featured images of nature, a few days before the end of COP21 in Paris.