Basilica of San Pietro

The Basilica of San Pedro was an initiative of the Emperor Constantine who, in the 4th century, decided to build this temple where the apostle had been buried. Used for the celebration of worship, as a covered cemetery and as a funerary banquet hall, during the High Middle Ages it was the main pilgrimage site in the West.

In 1452, Pope Nicolas V began a reform of the temple, maintaining the original surface, which was left unfinished after his death. Successive popes limited themselves to consolidating the structure.

It would be Julius II, in 1506, who would start the construction of a new building. After several designs, it is Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1546 who will give the definitive form. His project was completed twenty-four years after his death by Domingo Fontana and Jacobo de la Porta. When the latter died, in 1602, all that remained was to erect the façade and design the square.

The characters of the Borja saga did not know the complex as it has reached our days, except for Saint Francisco de Borja, who was able to contemplate the works of the new elevation.

The footprint of the Borgias in this place of reference for Christianity is limited to the primitive funerary monument of Calixtus III exhibited in the Vatican Grottoes and an artistic theory that identifies the faces of Michelangelo's Pietà with those of Vannozza Cattanei and Giovanni Borja, his son assassinated in Rome on June 14, 1497, since Alexander VI was the promoter of this famous sculpture. The work was commissioned to the young artist, in 1498, by Cardinal Jean Bilhères, legate of Charles VIII of France.

The steps of San Pedro was the scene in which Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Biseglia and husband of Lucrezia, was stabbed by a group of masked men on July 15, 1500, when he was going to meet his wife in the Vatican. Soon after, he would be assassinated by order of Cesare Borgia.