Giardino della Pigna. Vaticano - Cortile della Pigna con Colonna della Concordia

 Holy See (Vatican City State) > Vatican City

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Vatican - courtyard of Pinia with the Column of Concord. The most unlucky column of the Vatican. In 1869, Pope Pius IX commissioned the architect V. Vespignani to make the column in honor of the First Vatican Council (1868~1870). The Pope planned to erect a column with St. Peter on the high hill of Janiculum (Gianicolo) near the Church of St. Peter, where, according to legend, the Apostle Peter was executed. But in 1870, due to the forced unification of the Vatican State and Italy, this had to be abandoned. The bronze statue of St. Peter was sculpted by Filippo Gnaccarini (1870), the bas-reliefs of the pedestal were by Pietro Galli (c. 1873). In 1885, the monument was erected by the son of the architect Vespignani in the center of the Pini Court (where it stood until 1936, when, by order of Pius XI, the column with the monument was dismantled, the monument with the statue of St. Peter now stands in the Great Vatican Garden on another small pedestal).