Rome

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San Pietro in Vincoli

Built in the fifth century but reworked many times since, this church is dominated by the monument to Pope Julius II and Michelangelo’s imposing Moses (1515). Julius wanted a much grander tomb but died too soon to oversee it; his successors were less ambitious. As a result, the mighty Moses (in a bad translation of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for ‘radiant’ was mistaken for ‘horned’) is wildly out of proportion, and infinitely better than the rest, by Michelangelo’s students. Pilgrims come here for the chains. Eudoxia, wife of Emperor Valentinian III (445-55), was given a set of chains said to have been used to shackle St Peter in Jerusalem; with others used on the saint in the Mamertine prison, they are now conserved in a reliquary on the main altar.

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