St. Peter's Baldachin

Bernini's 29-meter bronze canopy over the tomb of St. Peter — four twisting Solomonic columns of blackened bronze crowned with an ornate baldachin that Barberini bees swarm across. The bronze was famously stripped from the Pantheon's portico ('what the barbarians did not do, the Barberini did'). Walk beneath it: the scale is absurd and the columns wobble in your peripheral vision. Look at the bases — reliefs of Urban VIII's niece giving birth, from labor pains to newborn cry, an unlikely private drama at the center of the basilica.