Saint Peter's Rebuilding Continues

1526

After twenty years of demolition and construction, the new Saint Peter's stood as an enormous roofless cross of travertine, its four great piers rising like cliffs above the old tomb of the apostle. Raphael was dead, Bramante was dead, and the search for a successor architect grew desperate. The seemingly interminable construction became a symbol of papal excess that reformers cited as evidence of Rome's spiritual corruption.