James Tucker in Cov

There's not an awful lot you can really say about St. Peter's Basilica. It's huge, but somehow doesn't seem as big inside as it does from the outside. From the outside I have no problems saying that it's probably the biggest building I've ever seen. Inside are a multitude of altars (at least 3 of which have the preserved bodies of popes visible through the front) and devotional works, primarily made of marble. Under the central altar (the bronze sculpture over it is over 100 feet tall) is a pit, in which can be seen the original late Roman shrine to St. Peter, still basically intact. Even farther below that is a series of caves in which an ancient cemetary has been found, which adds something to the claim that St. Peter's body is buried right under the church bearing his name.
We also managed to get into the crypt of the basilica, which put us level with the old Roman shrine to Peter, and in the tomb of the Popes. There were about 10-15 stone tombs there, including a very large and very plain one for John Paul II in a special side niche. It's obviously quite hard to get into the proper catacombs where the old graveyard is, but it was still interesting to find this core of the church that had been repeatedly built around.
Leaving the Vatican, we walked towards the river along a medieval city wall. This was the Pope's secret escape route to his castle- the Castel Saint Angelo. The castle, which we didn't go in, is actually the tomb of a Roman Emperor (Hadrian, I think). The papacy simply put some battlements and buildings on top, had them lavishly decorated, and made plans to flee there in case anything went badly wrong. There's a similar tomb for the Emperor Augustus, but it was never made into anything, and still stands on the other side of the river.
We had dinner near the Campo di Fiori, finally having discovered where the nightlife in central Rome was (about 200 feet from where we'd been looking,and ended up having a pasta meal in what I think was a very old house (on the right hand of the street). Like a few others, it had a proper tower, and I think that means it was the home of someone fairly important in the middle ages- I've heard of tower cities elsewhere in Italy, anyhow.
PS Below is one of St. Peter's greatest monuments for sheer lunacy- a marble skeleton running out with a blanket over its head. And it's about 25 feet high.