On Day Seven we were back in St. Peter’s Basilica for a tour but this time we were guided around the first floor by our tour guide Jill. We had radios with a headphone in our ear so we could listen to her explain the history on the significant pieces of art clearly. Without it we wouldn’t have been able to hear her because of how many people there were.

There is a lot of fantastic art and statues in  St. Peter’s Basilica. Popes that contributed in some way to the Basilica have statues lining the walls and entire sections of the Basilica.

We also visited the Castel Saint Angelo, which is a castle-like fortress that was built on top of a mausoleum for one of the Roman emperors. Later on, the Christians built a castle on top of it for the Pope, because of its prime location on the Tiber River. There is a secret but extremely obvious passageway that leads from Vatican to the Castel. The Popes use it to move secretly between the two but it was also used when a German tribe sacked the city of Rome so they could get the treasure of the church. The Germans were unable to kill the Pope but were able to kill every single Swiss Guard that was protecting the Pope.

The Castello has been changed into a place for Christians and at the very top is the archangel Gabriel placing his sword back into his scabbard. The Pope during a plague saw this as a sign that the plague is over and told the people that the plague will be gone by tomorrow. Sure enough, no one was sick the next day.

Not only was this a place of holiness but was also one of the key defensive positions for the city of Rome. Its strategic positioning made it impossible to penetrate for hundreds of years. The only way across from land is a single bridge that can easily be attacked from the castle. The castle also has a bird’s eye view of invading armies coming by boat on the Tiber. This made Rome an extremely difficult place to conquer after the castle’s creation and made the Pope and the people of Rome very powerful since they lived in an unconquerable city and was the ruler of the religion that 95% of the people of Europe belonged to.