The Rebirth of God's City Rome: A History of the Eternal City

Rome.

Holy City...

Eternal City.

A city with a sacred mission to rule and minister to the world.

Its stories of faith and violence

forged by 3,000 years of tyrants, saints and artists.

From the Roman emperors and the Christian popes

to the Renaissance and fascism...

..a holy city driven more by power than piety.

As a historian, I'm fascinated by this place.

I'm here to tell the history of the Eternal City

through its rulers, its art, its shrines...

In its first 2,000 years,

Rome developed from the seat of power of the pagan empire

to the capital of one of the great world faiths.

But at the beginning of its third millennium,

we find Rome at its lowest ebb.

Abandoned by the papacy, the city resembled a wilderness.

In this final episode,

the Renaissance popes embark on an incredible mission

to transform the city.

They harness the greatest talents of the age

to create a majestic new Rome.

Stepping inside some of Rome's most magnificent buildings,

I witness how religion, art, lust and greed

vie to create the most splendid city on Earth.

But the hubris of the popes

almost destroys the very city they are creating.

In the centuries that follow,

Protestantism and nationalism threaten Rome and the papacy.

In order to prosper,

the Eternal City would need to adapt again and again.

This is the blood-spattered, dramatic story

of how Rome emerged from the turbulence of the early popes

and the catastrophes of the Middle Ages

into the magnificent city we see today.

In 1350, Rome was a desperate backwater.

The kings of France dominated Rome

and forced the election of a French pope,

who took up his residence not in Rome,

but in Avignon.

Without the Pope, Rome lost its financial and moral power.

Crime thrived on its streets,

dominated by two aristocratic families,

the Colonnas and the Orsinis,

from their fortified palaces.

They ruled the territories in the city like gangster bosses...

..Rome's real-life versions

of Shakespeare's Montagues and Capulets.

There were now just 30,000 people living in Rome,

compared to a million in imperial times.

The city that was once the head of the world

had become, wrote poet Petrarch,

"The rubbish heap of history."

But salvation would come from an unlikely source.

The church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva

is the final resting place of the woman

who would rescue Rome's fortunes.

Her name was Caterina Benincasa,

but she's better known as St Catherine of Siena.

She spent much of her life in a state of feverish rapture,

of long periods of deep meditation,

and it was said that Jesus' wounds bled from her body.

In 1370, Catherine was 23.

She was broken-hearted by the fall of Rome.

She believed the Pope had betrayed Christianity itself

by abandoning his city.

It was an article of faith for believers

that the Pope was the natural heir of St Peter,

the first Bishop of Rome,

and to properly exert his authority, he had to rule from the Holy City.

Catherine believed that in order to save her precious Church,

the Pope had to return.

Catherine made it her life's mission to bring the Pope back to Rome.

Alone against the might of the papacy and the rulers of Europe,

Catherine fought to save the Church and city.

She wrote letter after letter imploring the Pope to leave Avignon.

Some of the earliest editions are here at the Biblioteca Casanatense.

Manuscript keeper Isabella Ceccopieri

has agreed to translate them for me.

"Come, come, and resist no more the will of God that calls you,

"for you, as the vicar of Christ, should rest in your own place

"and fear not for anything that might happen,

"since God will be with you."

I guess the first thing that strikes you in this is that Catherine...

She's saying, "Get a move on, Pope. Get a move on, Holy Father.

"Get down there. This is my personal command..."

-As if they were equals.

-As equals. Completely as equals.

"So, I ask unto you, our father and our shepherd,

"begging you on behalf of Christ

"to rescue the lost sheep, the human race,

"from the hands of the demons."

And, of course, the demons are those running riot in Rome

when the Pope is away.

And so, this is a very powerful appeal.

She believes more than anything that the Pope's rightful place is in Rome

and that she wants him with all her will, backed by the Holy Spirit,

to return there.

Yeah. She's a strong will.

She's got such a strong will. Very powerful stuff.

After years of Catherine's letter-writing,

the Pope showed no sign of returning.

She resolved to travel to Avignon to confront the Pope directly.

The fate of Rome rested on the shoulders of this lone woman.

In 1377,

the Pope returned in a triumphant procession to the Holy City

with Catherine of Siena by his side.

After 70 years of exile,

the Pope was back in his rightful place.

Centuries later, Catherine would be rewarded

by being made patron saint of Italy...

AND Europe.

But it would be years before Rome recovered

from the Avignon Exile.

Rome was in need of a strong ruler,

but the papacy was now bizarrely weakened.

The Pope may have been back in Rome, but at the end of the 14th century,

the French king elected a rival pope, an antipope,

over in Avignon.

Kings and emperors now felt they could appoint their own popes

to suit themselves.

The situation got so ridiculous that, at times,

there were three popes in three different cities

all claiming to be supreme pontiff.

This became known as the Western Schism.

Rome would never reign supreme while the papacy was a laughing stock.

I've come to the place where the schism ended

and the resurgence began...

..where the Romans claimed back their papacy.

This is the largest private palace in Rome,

and it's still the home of the Colonna family.

They've lived here for 700 years,

and in the 13th and 14th centuries,

they were one of the two warring families

fighting for control of Rome's streets.

But in 1417, the Colonna family pulled off a major triumph.

After centuries of dominating Rome

with their private armies and wealth,

these swaggering warlords were about to play a decisive role

in restoring the papacy and the city.

There was one way to harness their violent power.

To elect a member of the family as pope.

And to this day,

the palace displays a special piece of furniture to mark this triumph.

This is the throne room.

Every dynasty with a pope in the family

had one just like this for when future popes came to visit.

And here's the throne itself.

But as you can see, it's facing the wrong way round,

and that's because it was only turned to face the right way

when there was a pope actually here to sit on it.

It was the election of the Colonna Pope, Martin V, in 1417

that brought an end to the Western Schism.

The competing popes had turned the papacy into a farce,

and finally, a council persuaded all the popes to resign.

When they elected Martin V, it was first time in years

that the Pope had not only been Italian, but a Roman,

and a scion of the city's most powerful family.

From now on, the papacy was Roman, and Rome would be the papal city.

But the papacy was still vulnerable, and the city was a mess.

The Pope's task now was to restore the authority of both,

to make Rome the undisputed capital of Christendom.

From this point on, the popes were united by a shared vision.

Through the 15th and 16th centuries

they embarked on a project of breathtaking scope

that would turn Rome into a building site for 200 years.

Pope Nicholas V declared that they would create "great buildings"

that would demonstrate that

"the authority of the Roman Church is the greatest and highest."

Rome, said Pope Sixtus IV, would be "the capital of the world."

The mission was to create the most magnificent city on Earth,

so that pilgrims who couldn't read or write

could see in its churches and palaces

the glory of God and his popes.

Rome's renaissance had begun.

Across the skyline, the domes of grandiose churches started to rise.

Popes and cardinals built the most sumptuous palaces

to display the impressive art they'd commissioned.

The most elaborate of these would be the papal residence itself,

the Vatican.

It was an astonishing endeavour that brought together

the highest and lowest of human appetites.

Spirituality and art vied with power, lust and greed.

It took the patronage of many popes,

the work of the greatest artists that have ever lived,

and incalculable sums of money.

The ambition was boundless, the vision splendid.

The popes would stop at nothing

to make Rome the most holy city on Earth...

..a new Jerusalem.

But the men leading the mission would be far from saintly.

The Renaissance popes saw no contradiction

between their sacred role, cut-throat politics,

and the pursuit of wealth and pleasure.

There was one Pope who personifies this merciless magnificence

like no other.

This is the Castel Sant'Angelo,

the fortress, prison and torture chamber of the papacy,

and up there is the family crest of Pope Alexander VI.

But if you look closely, you'll see that it's been totally vandalised.

And this is because Alexander VI was a member

of the most notorious family in the entire history of the papacy...

the Borgias.

The Borgia Pope was the nephew of the Spanish Pope Callixtus III,

who raised him to Cardinal.

A brilliantly cunning and effective politician,

as Pope, he was ruthlessly effective in promoting papal power.

He was determined to make Rome great

and his family even greater.

His son, Cesare Borgia, was a bishop at 16 and a cardinal at 18,

but he probably murdered his own brother,

whose death enabled him to resign from the Church

and become papal commander-in-chief,

conquering new territories for the family.

He was brilliantly talented, tireless and terrifying.

His victims were found floating in the Tiber every morning.

But to Machiavelli, he was the ideal of the Renaissance prince.

Cesare Borgia was the Pope's flamboyant enforcer and henchman.

No-one was safe in his reign of terror.

Corruption, war and assassination

were as much part of Rome's renaissance as the exquisite art.

And the popes and cardinals were often as debauched

as they were priestly.

The Borgias shamelessly turned the Vatican

into a palace of pleasure.

The Pope himself had many lovers and fathered many children.

Historian Mary Hollingsworth

has been studying an account written by a senior courtier

which provides a rather interesting insight

into Borgia life at the Vatican.

The papal master of ceremonies did describe

a particularly lurid dinner party that Cesare...

not, I should say, the Borgia Pope, but that Cesare held in the Vatican.

And at the end of the meal,

the guests removed all the big silver candelabra onto the ground,

and then scattered chestnuts all over the floor

and invited in a bevy of naked ladies,

who went around on their hands and knees,

bobbing up and down their heads

to pick up these chestnuts in their mouths.

And then, at the end, once all the chestnuts had been collected,

and, presumably, all the wares, as it were, had been displayed,

then the male guest who had sex

with the largest number of these prostitutes

was ceremonially given a present of a very expensive pair of gloves.

So, those things seem to be true.

I mean, there are plenty of later popes

where things like that happened.

Wasn't one of the great accusations thrown at the Borgia Pope

was that he had so many mistresses and so many children?

Was that usual for a for a religious leader like the Pope at this time?

Well, I suppose he wasn't the first to do it and nor was he the last,

but he was just slightly more so. So, he was slightly more...

He had rather more beautiful mistresses and, you know,

an awfully large bevy of children.

How seriously did these Renaissance popes take their Christianity?

Well, I personally think they took it very seriously.

I mean, just because they're extravagant,

it's not that that they're not religious. It's not either/or.

It's a different way of doing things.

For the Renaissance popes,

outrageous parties and ostentatious displays of wealth

were a tribute to the glory of God and Church...

..and a demonstration to the world of their power and sanctity.

In the mission to make Rome great once more,

there was one Pope whose ambitions would exceed all others.

The successor to the Borgia Pope

would be the ultimate creator of Renaissance Rome.

His name was Giuliano della Rovera.

Years before he became Pope,

he began forming his great vision for the city.

And in the entrance to the church outside his old home

is a clue to his master plan for the new Rome.

He erected a relief of an eagle...

..the mighty symbol of Ancient Rome.

Giuliano had rescued the great eagle from the ruins,

and he wanted to do the same to Rome itself.

His vision was to restore the Eternal City

to its ancient glories.

And he himself would be its Julius Caesar.

So it's no wonder that when elected Pope,

the name he chose was Julius II.

Deep inside the Vatican Palace,

the walls of Julius's private apartments ring out

with the story of his reign.

This high priest saw himself as a warrior pope...

..who would don armour to lead his troops into battle...

..like the emperors of old.

He became know as Papa Terribile, the fearsome Pope.

But his most effective foot soldiers would be his army of artists.

He assembled a team of the greatest artists in history

to equal, and even out-do, the glory of imperial Rome.

The artist Raphael

would be commissioned to decorate his living quarters,

which many consider Raphael's finest work.

Classical, as well as Christian, scenes

dominate the Papal Apartments.

The pagan God Apollo has pride of place,

surrounded by the finest poets, from Homer to Dante.

Not all Christians were comfortable with the pagan imagery,

but this classical/Christian fusion

was the true spirit of the Renaissance.

Julius was channelling the greatest human achievements throughout history

to promote the power of the papacy and Christian Rome.

But it was Julius' partnership with one particular artist

that would come to define the Renaissance more than any other.

An artist so revered that even his rival, Raphael, painted him...

Michelangelo.

Michelangelo was impossible to deal with.

He was obsessive, paranoid and avaricious.

Tormented by his artistic rivalries, his religious doubts,

the demands of his greedy family, and his own homosexuality.

But Julius's commission would produce a peerless masterpiece,

the jewel of the Renaissance.

500 years after its creation,

it is still regarded as one of the world's finest works.

Even amidst the other splendours of the Sistine Chapel,

it's the ceiling that takes your breath away.

Painting the ceiling was a physical and creative challenge.

Michelangelo was tormented by neck and eye pain.

And Julius was a harsh taskmaster. He beat Michelangelo with a stick,

but the haughty artist was every bit as volcanic as his patron.

Julius even used his own epithet to describe him - Il Terribile.

But from this fiery relationship came perfection.

In 1512, a heavenly vision was unveiled.

The creation narrative of Genesis

has never been so sublimely rendered.

This is truly the pinnacle of the Renaissance.

It's just amazing to be here.

One really feels one's...in the company of genius.

As you see God giving life to Adam,

you feel, too, how Michelangelo gave life to the Renaissance.

Rome was reborn.

Michelangelo projects his vision of the human body

as an expression of God's design.

While for Julius, this was the declaration of papal Rome

as all-powerful and divinely blessed.

But Julius wasn't prepared to stop here.

Seven years earlier,

Julius had set in motion an even more ambitious project...

..right next door to the Vatican Palace.

An endeavour so colossal, it would outlast Julius

and the final days of the Renaissance itself.

Inside the Church of San Martino ai Monti

is an image of what was once the most sacred building in Rome...

..the original St Peter's Basilica, built by Constantine the Great.

It was already 1,000 years old.

The very legitimacy and sanctity of the popes themselves

were based on their connection to the place

where St Peter had been crucified and buried.

But in 1505, Pope Julius II decided to destroy it.

Many of the clergy were outraged.

To destroy the basilica was sacrilege.

Julius wanted to build a bigger, better St Peter's,

that would be fittingly magnificent for the capital of Christendom.

But he was taking a huge gamble.

He was demolishing Rome's most beloved building

and the only church that linked the city and the papacy

to the early days of Christianity, and St Peter himself.

The rebuilding of St Peter's would last 120 years.

It would take the commitment of another 20 popes

to deliver Julius's vision.

But this would be a period of astonishing activity,

during which the values of Renaissance Rome

would be severely tested.

-Hello.

-Hi there.

'The challenge began with the astronomical cost

'of building the new St Peter's.'

The Renaissance had attracted many more pilgrims to Rome,

and they brought in massive new revenues,

but they were soon spent and the Church needed much, much more.

'And so, in the early 16th century,

'the popes began exploiting a uniquely papal practice

'to raise more money...'

-Can I have this, please?

-Yes, sure.

-How much is it?

-20 Euro.

-20 Euro, OK.

'..the selling of indulgences.'

The practice had been around since the 6th century.

It was simple. People would pay to have their sins forgiven.

And it raised so much money that they had an even brighter idea.

People would pay for sins they hadn't even committed yet.

OK? 25, sir.

25, perfect. There we are.

'The papacy had turned sin into a business.'

This abuse, taking place in the heart of God's city,

outraged many Christians.

For years, the Renaissance popes

had thrived through decadence and corruption.

But the selling of indulgences would prove one step too far.

I've come to a palace that defines the moment

Renaissance Rome came tumbling down.

The Villa Farnesina was known as the Villa of Pleasure,

and was frequently visited by Julius's successor, Leo X.

Pope Leo was better at parties than he was at politics.

"God has given us the papacy," he said,

"so let us enjoy it!"

And enjoy it he did.

He was a member of the Medici banking family,

but in one year, he squandered the entire savings of the papacy

on pleasures, on art, and on gambling.

His reign marks the delicious climax

of the debauchery of the Renaissance papacy.

The popes believed they were invincible.

But they were wrong.

Their decadent version of Christianity

did not go unnoticed by Christians outside of Rome...

..and the Renaissance was about to reach an explosive finale.

One German monk visiting Rome was particularly outraged.

His name was Martin Luther.

Everything that the Renaissance popes valued and nurtured for Rome,

Luther loathed.

Sexual pleasure, the beauty of the human body,

the admiration for pagan art.

And most disturbing of all,

the selling of the forgiveness of sins.

The worst perpetrator of these abominations was the Pope himself.

Luther said that far from being God's representative on Earth,

he was an agent of the devil.

Luther returned to his home town in Germany

and nailed his protest to the church door,

thereby launching the movement that became known as Protestantism.

He defied the Church, and his Protestantism

would be the greatest challenge to papal supremacy in all its history.

The papacy had little time for Luther,

but it would not be long before his protests

would shake the Church to its foundations

and bring catastrophe to Rome.

Just upstairs is a long-hidden piece of evidence

of the horrific conclusion of the Renaissance.

In the late 1990s, some art restorers working on this room

uncovered some totally fascinating graffiti...

..which dates back to the year 1528.

Now, it's very hard to decipher this,

and with apologies for my hopeless German, it says,

"Was soll ich die schreiben

nit lachen die Landsknechten haben den Papst laufen machen."

The man who wrote this graffiti is congratulating himself

and his mates.

He says, "Why shouldn't I laugh?

"We, the Landsknecht, have set the Pope on the run."

The Landsknecht were a force of German mercenaries

sent to Italy by Emperor Charles V

as a warning to the inept Medici Pope, Clement VII.

But in May 1527, they mutinied...

..and stormed the city.

The Landsknecht were Protestants

who believed the Pope was the Antichrist.

Infuriated by tales of papal hedonism,

they ran amok in the satanic city.

The small papal army didn't stand a chance

as the Landsknecht went berserk.

They slaughtered everyone they encountered in the streets.

They disembowelled priests.

They turned monasteries into brothels.

The Eternal City had become Hell on Earth.

The Pope tried to negotiate with them,

but no-one could stop the mayhem.

So, he escaped from the Vatican along the passato,

this fortified passageway,

to seek refuge in the Castel Sant'Angelo.

And here he hid for almost an entire year.

The Pope's health disintegrated.

Outside of the Castel, Rome was ravaged.

The city was devastated.

The population halved

by hunger, murder and plague.

But, still, the troops wouldn't leave,

and in December 1527, they said that if they didn't get their money,

they'd hang their captains and slice the Pope into pieces.

By this time, the Pope was starving,

blind in one eye and ridden with liver disease.

He escaped from the Castel Sant'Angelo disguised as a servant

and headed out of Rome to the Papal residence at Orvieto.

The Pope had lost his splendour and his power.

The Holy City had lost its ruler, its protector.

The Sack of Rome was the greatest catastrophe in all its history.

The follies of the Renaissance popes

had brought the Eternal City close to destruction.

On the 11th of February 1528, the Landsknecht were finally paid

and the horde finally left.

The Pope returned to Rome.

The Sack of Rome was seen as God's judgement,

even by the Pope himself.

Rome was being punished for its sins.

Now, one thing was clear. The Church would have to change.

The result was the Catholic Reformation.

Dissidence and excess were now brutally repressed.

For the moment, at least,

the orgies and mistresses were out, austerity and chastity were in.

The new severity was personified by Paul IV, a brutal and pedantic prig

who regarded the ancient monuments of Rome

as pagan and, therefore, heretical.

He said he would have liked to destroy them all.

But worse, he was disgusted by the naked private parts

of the Renaissance masterpieces,

and ordered many of them to be painted over.

It is his fitting punishment that history remembers him above all

as the Fig Leaf Pope.

The curse of the fig leaf is still visible today

on Michelangelo's later work in the Sistine Chapel.

The Last Judgment was the final masterpiece of the Renaissance.

I think it's the finest celebration

of the grace and dignity of the human body,

but it also brutally reflects the dystopic mayhem of the Sack of Rome.

Its naked passions appalled the Catholic Reformation

and some of Michelangelo's beautifully bare figures

now wear rather strategically placed pieces of cloth.

And one previously naked woman

has had her modesty restored with a rather frumpy green dress.

But the Catholic Reformation attacked more than just art.

It unleashed the Roman Inquisition on the Eternal City.

The Inquisition was set up to enforce the doctrines of the Church

and destroy any heresies or impurities.

Peccadilloes that had been overlooked or indulged during the Renaissance

were now brutally punished.

Homosexuals were burnt alive.

Jews, who had lived peacefully in Rome for 1,700 years,

were confined to a ghetto.

But the biggest challenge to Roman supremacy

was the new rival branch of Christianity.

As Protestantism spread, the papacy resolved to fight it on every level,

from the world of art to the battlefield.

In 1539, the Catholic Church created a new militant wing.

This is the Church of Saint Ignacio, named after Ignacio Loyola,

a military man who believed that the winning of Christian souls

could be conducted like a military campaign.

So, he founded the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.

And a look at this astonishing ceiling

tells you all you need to know about the passionate energy

of the Jesuit mission.

Saint Ignacio commands the centre, empowered by Jesus Christ himself.

His heart radiates four sacred beams that propel his female missionaries

to the four corners of the world

to slay the pagans.

Indeed, the Jesuit mission was international and universal.

It was to convert everyone.

It used both the sword and the prayer book.

The Jesuits valued education above all else,

and used their sophisticated analysis of human character

to win souls, defeat enemies,

and to defend and spread papal authority.

By the 17th Century,

the reach of Rome had spread beyond its walls

to the four corners of the world.

The Renaissance may have passed,

but a new heyday now dawned for the Holy City.

Rome was the heart of a new Christendom. Not just Catholic,

but Roman Catholic.

The battle against Protestantism would embellish Rome itself.

The popes launched a new and exhilarating war of culture.

They championed an artistic movement

to project a new-found intensity of passion

and ecstasy of revelation.

This new art was personified by one man.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was the master of baroque art.

Impulsive and emotional,

when he found his mistress was having an affair with his brother,

he beat his brother up with a crowbar

and had her permanently scarred with a razor blade.

But Bernini was adored by Pope Urban VIII,

who told him, "You're lucky to have me as Pope,

"but I'm even luckier to have you."

Their partnership was responsible

for much of what we see in Rome today.

Bernini, in many ways, is to the 17th century

what Michelangelo had been in the 16th century,

and he certainly was the best interpreter

of the wishes of the popes.

Art historian Alexandra Massini has brought me to see

the sculpture that Bernini considered his masterpiece.

It's called The Ecstasy Of Saint Teresa.

Tell me about this piece. I mean, this is extraordinary.

Well, this is really a very intense religious experience

that is described by Saint Teresa

but, you know, if I read out her own words

and you see the sculpture that goes along with it,

I think there's little ambiguity as to what exactly is happening...

So, let me just read this...

"I saw that he had a long golden dart in his hand..."

She's referring to this angel that she sees appearing.

"I thought that he pierced my heart with this dart several times

"and in such a manner that it went through my very bowels

"and when he drew it out, it seemed as if my bowels came with it,

"and I remained wholly inflamed with a great love of God.

"The pain thereof was so intense that it forced deep groans from me,

"but the sweetness which this extreme pain caused in me

"was so excessive that there was no desiring to be free from it."

So, I think this is a very graphic and very erotic rendering

of an absolutely physical experience.

Now, this was very different from, really, what had gone before,

because we're coming out of the Counter-Reformation,

a strict time, a severe time, a time of a sort of moral crackdown,

and suddenly we have this explosion of sensual...

sensual extravagance, really.

The restraints of the Counter-Reformation are long gone

by this stage, and...

What you are out to do is really to draw in the viewer

and that's why you do things

that are absolutely theatrical and absolutely dramatic,

and that explains why you have such an erotic piece

that ends up in a church, where you would at least expect it.

The viewer thinks... A modern-day viewer would think,

"OK, this is something absolutely secular. What is it doing inside a church?"

But it is part, I think, of this emotional sensibility that...

people expected at the time,

even inside a church, even from the faithful.

It is part of the religious picture of the time.

Was this new sensibility of the Catholic Church,

represented by the baroque and Bernini,

really also a way of competing with Protestantism?

It definitely was, yes.

I think that whereas the Protestants are really...

sticking to a literal reading of the Bible,

here we have something totally different. It is...

You reach God through the senses, through opening up your heart,

through experiencing things to the...to your bones, literally,

and that, I think, is what makes this work of art so powerful.

Saying, "The Church can give you this."

Exactly. The Church can give you this.

-And that's quite something.

-Yes. Yes, indeed.

The Church deployed every available weapon

to win the battle of Christian souls.

But to complete Rome's status as the ultimate Holy City,

there was one major task left undone...

to finish the new St Peter's.

By 1610, the exterior was finally complete.

115 years after Julius II had knocked down the original,

a vast new structure now dominated Rome's skyline.

It proclaims the power and confidence of the Catholic Church.

But the basilica still lacked a centrepiece.

And it's here that Bernini produced his masterpiece.

The new basilica had been built above the original tomb of St Peter.

To honour the shrine which gave Papal Rome its sanctity,

Bernini created this monumental canopy,

his baldacchino.

There's something very thrilling and powerful

about this triumphalist piece of architecture here.

It's not just declaring the triumph of the Church

and the majesty of the papacy,

but it's also pointing out the connection

between Rome and Jerusalem.

These gorgeous curving pillars are specially designed

as replicas of pillars from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

And so, what Bernini is saying here is that Rome is the new Holy City,

Rome is the new Jerusalem.

On the 18th of November 1626,

the vision of Julius II was finally realised.

20 popes later, the new St Peter's was finished.

Today, it remains the largest church in the world.

I think the gigantic force of this church

defines Rome as the capital of Christendom.

An emblem of the success of the Renaissance dream

and global Catholicism.

Julius's gamble had paid off.

By the 18th century,

the story of the making of the Holy City is almost complete.

At first glance, Rome looked very much like it does today...

..filled with tourists eager to see its beautiful monuments.

But there was one crucial difference between then and now.

The popes were still the autocratic rulers

of their own swathe of Italian territories - the Papal States.

But all of that was about to change.

In the mid 19th century,

new ideologies were sweeping across Europe,

which would permanently alter the shape of the Holy City...

..republicanism and nationalism.

They rejected the medieval and sclerotic papal autocracy.

Having already taken hold of France,

the idea of a republican nation was gathering momentum

across the separate states of the Italian peninsula.

A doctor's son from the northern city of Genoa named Giuseppe Mazzini

led the campaign to unite the various kingdoms of the peninsula

into just one country - Italy.

And Mazzini believed there could only be one capital.

"Rome," he said, "was the national centre of Italian unity,

"the dream of my young years, the religion of my soul."

If Mazzini succeeded, he would end papal rule for ever.

Not surprisingly, the Pope denounced the new Italian nationalism

and called on all Catholics to reject it.

War was looming.

In 1849, the Republican troops,

led by the swashbuckling warlord Giuseppe Garibaldi,

descended on Rome.

This time, the Pope had a surprising ally

in his opposition to Italian republicanism.

France - now ruled by Emperor Napoleon III,

nephew of the great Napoleon Bonaparte.

And when Rome fell to Garibaldi and the Republicans,

Napoleon sent an army to get it back.

They bombarded Rome and, as chance would have it,

a French cannon ball smashed right in to the sumptuous great hall

of Prince Colonna's Palace.

Now, this is one of my favourite secrets of Rome,

because that Napoleonic cannonball

embedded itself in Prince Colonna's marble staircase...

and it's still there to this day.

Thanks to the support of Napoleon III,

the Pope still ruled Rome.

But Mazzini's vision of Rome as the capital of Italy lived on.

In 1870, Napoleon III fell, the French withdrew,

and the army of the new nation of Italy entered Rome.

Commanded by Victor Emmanuel,

king of the newly-formed Kingdom of Italy.

He made Rome his capital, while its former ruler, the Pope,

retreated behind the walls of the Vatican,

where he melodramatically declared himself a prisoner.

Secularism had taken control of the Holy City.

A vast monument in honour of King Victor Emmanuel

was erected to dominate the Rome of the past

and dwarf its religious buildings.

Grotesque it may be, but its message was clear.

Rome had new masters.

The city no longer belonged to the Pope.

But the Pope was not going to make this easy.

Historian Anne Wingenter has been studying this pivotal period

in Rome's history.

So, when King Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy,

arrived and united Rome with the rest of Italy,

how did that effect the Pope?

Well, I mean, the Pope essentially refused to recognise

the Kingdom of Italy, and not just this particular Pope

when Rome was taken, but the next several popes, and...

they encourage Catholics, not just in Italy, but around the world,

not to recognise the Kingdom of Italy.

And threatening Italians with ex-communication

if they participate in the political life of the state.

You know, it's a real problem,

because there's a priest in every village, you know,

telling people that, you know, the state is illegitimate.

And the Pope retreats to the Vatican Palace?

The popes stay in the Vatican,

and they don't give the address in St Peter's Square.

They sort of cut the state off from...the mother Church

which, if you're a believing Catholic, is...is a problem.

The papacy and the kingdom would be in a stand-off for 60 years.

Surprisingly, the man who solved the problem

was the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini understood the popularity of the Church

would add to the legitimacy of his fascist regime.

So in 1929, he signed the Lateran Pact with the Pope,

that created the Vatican state.

The border is right here.

Now, I'm standing in the Republic of Italy,

and when I cross the line...

..now I'm standing in the Vatican state,

the Pope's own country.

The Vatican state became the world's smallest nation.

At just 0.2 square miles,

the new papal state was a miniature of its former glories.

But it meant that the Pope could lead his billion global Catholics

as an independent priest monarch.

Now, for the first time in Roman history,

secular and sacred power were separate in one Holy City.

Espiritu Santo...

In today's Rome, all the strands of old and new come together.

You can see it right here on this street corner,

surrounded by tourists and yet, nowadays, strangely overlooked.

Right up there, you can see Romulus and Remus,

the founders of Ancient Rome, and above them,

the fasces, the symbols of fascism.

And all of this on this majestic thoroughfare

leading straight to the magnificent basilica of St Peter's.

All of it, modern and ancient,

now, together, seem happily, typically, Roman.

For three millennia,

Rome has been the definition of power and sanctity.

Rome, like Christianity's other holy city, Jerusalem,

is a place where man meets the divine.

Throughout its history,

Rome's destiny has been determined inseparably

by both the cruel necessities of power

and by the passion of faith.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd