St.

Peter’s Basilica
 Construction Timeline(1357-1447)

• Wool Guild - responsibility for works in Cathedrals

• Resolution to build nave and aisle
• Board of experts prepares plan for church and octagonal
dome
• Resolution sanctioned for this model
• Finance studies, plans, and models for the dome
• Dome design competition announced; no winner declared
• Second competition for single model
• Construction of Dome
• Total weight raised -29,000 tons
• 2 million working hours- to complete dome.
• Several million bricks
 Materials

Timber – tall white fir from the forests

Sandstone – from nearby quarry
Bricks – from kiln
White marble – from quarries
Metal – mostly iron (for chains, bars, nails, brackets, templates for
specific marble parts, etc.)
Rope – from Pisa
Mortar – prepared from quicklime mixed with sand (or lime mixed
with brickdust)
 Dome Construction Techniques
• Double-masonry dome, with a thick inner octagonal shell
connected to a thinner outer shell with meridional arched ribs
• 6 horizontal sandstone rings, reinforced by iron chains, resist
tensile outward force
• Inner dome -thicker
• Pointed dome has half the tendency to burst as a shallower,
spherical dome
• Herringbone brick pattern used to stablize each ring at every
level of construction

Tension Rings
Lantern
• St. Peter's Basilica, the main church at the Vatican, too
small to impress anyone.
• Pope Julius II -crown the old church with a dome.
• hired Italian architect Donato Bramante . Bramante's
vision for the Basilica was simple:
• Greek cross with equal-sized arms around a central
dome .
• Bramante and the Pope -died before much could be
built.
• In 1546, a young artist from Florence - Michelangelo
gained total control of the construction of St. Peter's
• the largest church
 Michelangelo’s Floor Plan
(Greek Cross, all arms equal lengths)
 Details

• Purpose: Religious
• Location: Vatican City, Italy
• Completion Date: 1626
• Dome Diameter: 138 feet
• Dome Type: Ribbed
• Height: 452 feet above the street, 390 feet above
the floor
• Materials: Concrete, brick (masonry)
• Architects: Donato Bramante, Michelangelo
 St.Peters Basilica

Coupled columns,Recessed windows

Octagonal shell,Triple layered dome
Internal piers( 60 square feet)
Pendentives
Internal Spiral Stairwells (inside piers)
Buttresses for Dome Support
Windows in Drum
 Minor Domes

• Michelangelo’s death and

chief architect from 1565 to
1573- Vignola.

•One of the two minor domes,

designed by Vignola.

•Smaller domes are in style of

Bramante’s domes with a Cupola

• thin walled and single layered

 Deviations in Dome Design

• Michelangelo designed a “true,” Roman,

hemispherical dome
• Final dome - 20 ft. taller than a hemisphere;
exterior dome is not hemispherical and thus
Not concentric with the inner shell
• Lantern-octagonal,
• Dome planned to have 8 ribs,actually- 16 ribs.
THANK YOU