Sina Bernini BristolRome, Italy

Rome: This unique city, where visitors are swamped by an endless variety of images and kaleidoscope of stimuli, has been called eternal. This may be because it has seen a series of periods of splendor alternating with others of decay, and yet has been reborn each time. It abounds in treasures and relics of the past, in a setting that has retained its fascination in spite of the assaults of modern civilization

St Peter's , The basilica di St. Peter, built over the tomb of the apostle, is the heart of Christendom and one of the most significant monuments of world art and culture. The basilica, founded by Emperor Constantine, was rebuilt to a design by Bramante from 1506 onward at the behest of Pope Julius II. After Bramante, the construction was supervised by Raphael, Baldassarre Peruzzi, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Michelangelo (who designed the magnificent dome), Giacomo della Porta, Domenico Fontana and Carlo Maderno, who built the façade. The basilica was eventually consecrated by Urban VIII on November 18, 1626. The church faces onto the spectacular square laid out by Gian Lorenzo Bernini: ringed by the great colonnade, it has two fountains and an Egyptian obelisk at the center. Among the many treasures housed in the basilica, a few date from the time of the original church, such as the Tomb of Innocent VIII by the Florentine artist Pollaiolo, the bronze statue of Saint Peter by Arnolfo di Cambio, whose foot has been worn away by the kisses of the faithful, and the Pietà of the young Michelangelo, rare in its formal perfection and warmth of feeling. Also worth mentioning are the imposing baldachin and the throne of St. Peter, both by Bernini, Canova's tomb of Clement XIII and the door made by the contemporary artist Giacomo Manzù for Pope John XXIII.

The Pantheon The Pantheon is probably the best preserved temple in Rome. It was built by the son-in-law of the emperor Augustus, Marcus Agrippa, who dedicated it to all the gods in 27 BC, but the building attained its present appearance following the renovation ordered by Hadrian between 118 and 125 AD. The portico was embellished with large doors and bronze decorations that survived until the seventeenth century, when Pope Urban VIII Barberini had them melted down to build the baldachin in St. Peter's. The even was commemorated in the city by an anonymous sonnet: Quod non fecerunt barbari fecerunt Barberini ("What the barbarians didn't do was done by the Barberini"). Subsequently the Pantheon was restored on several occasions, and is now a church housing the tombs of several kings of Italy and great artists, including Raphael. The dome is the largest to have come down to us from antiquity and was constructed by a single pouring of concrete into a wooden scaffold. It has a beautiful and harmonious decoration of coffers.

The Pinacoteca Vaticana: The heart of the Vatican's vast range of museums and galleries, the world famous Pinacoteca comprises several fundamental groups of works. One of the most important is made up of paintings that used to be in the collection of Pius VI, elected pope in 1775, and includes a number of great eighteenth-century masterpieces, such as Nicolas Poussin's Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus. Some of these pictures were transferred here from the Palazzo del Quirinale, or brought back from Paris by the sculptor Antonio Canova at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after they had been looted at the time of the French Revolution. Another group comprises paintings taken from churches in Rome and the Papal States, like the Transfiguration, last work of the sublime Raphael, once in the basilica of San Pietro in Montorio, and Caravaggio's imposing Deposition. Over the course of the twentieth century, the Pinacoteca's collection was substantially enriched by donations and acquisitions: among the latter are fourteen fragments of the frescoes painted in the apse of the church of the Santi Apostoli by Melozzo da Forlì in the closing decades of the fifteenth century, including several Angels Playing Musical Instruments that are fully Renaissance in their beauty.