Identifier: lettersarchitect01wood (find matches)
Title: Letters of an architect, from France, Italy, and Greece
Year: 1828 (1820s)
Authors: Woods, Joseph, 1776-1864
Subjects: Architecture Architecture Architecture
Publisher: London, J. and A. Arch
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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, cost 4,184 crowns; it ispreserved in the present church, and is itself a building which may de-serve some description. The plan, as I have already said, is a Greekcross, with arms of considerable length, each terminating in a semi-circle. The angles of this simple form are occupied by four other Greekcrosses, so that the construction appears to depend on sixteen masses.Four of these, each of which is a square with one angle cut away, sup-port the dome. It is said that in Bramante s design these were tohave been hollow; but the model exhibits no opening into them. Eightother masses are perforated, to correspond with the circular corridorsbehind the tribunes. These do not shew their whole width towards thegreat cross, the centre of the semicircle being brought a little inwards.The four remaining masses which form the angles of the general square,are each hollow, and crowned with an octagonal turret. In the executionof the building the external circuit has been much contracted, and the
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SAINT Peters. 363 corridors round the semicircles entirely suppressed ; but in other respectsthis plan is very nearly the same as that of the present church. Immedi-ately in front is another large edifice, forming rather a disproportionatevestibule. It is perforated in both directions by a large open arch, andflanked by two lofty detached towers, whose height is equal to that of thecentral cupola with its lantern and ornaments. The body of the building is ornamented with two orders, Doric belowand Ionic above. Between them is an enormous Attic which might itselfbe called an order. The towers have a second range of Ionic semi-columns and one of Corinthian. They are then contracted to an octagon,and afterwards become round; in this part we find a circle of sixteen de-tached Corinthian columns, with their entablature and a balustrade above.On the balustrade, perpendicularly over each column, is a conical orna-ment, eight larger cones rise from the wall of the interior cylinder, and astil

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