Travel
Diary of Mrs. R.P. Eaton:
Europe,
Egypt, and Palestine, ca. 1857
You enter this church as you do others at Rome, by lifting a heavy leather curtain, and then your eyes meet a sight, for vastness and majesty, richness and grandeur, afforded by no other religious temple in the world. Amplitude and height, massiveness and splendor, characterize the interior. Look up into the skyline dome, and you do not wonder that Michael Angelo called it a “firmament of marble.” The pictures are all in mosaic, and are finely wrought. Amidst all this display of rich ornamentation, you see much that you deem neither agreeable nor in good taste. A double flight of stairs lead down to the reputed tomb of Peter, above and around which over a hundred lights are constantly burning, near by elevated a few feet above the floor of the church is a black statue of the Apostle, before which you persons come and kneel, and rise and kiss the great toe of the projecting foot, which is considerably shortened by this unceasing babial attrition.
On my next visit to St. Peter’s, I ascended to the roof, which is quite a plateau, or place containing dwellings and families living there; and then to the base of the dome, and then to near its crown, from which you look down the frightful distance to the floor of the church, where men and women, and procession of priests seem but creeping pigmies.