VisibleLink #1: The World is Yours!

Google Earth

If you go to Rome, you can check out the Vatican (not to mention the Colosseum, of course). Bernini famously created Piazza San Pietro (the big open area) by designing and building the colonnades. The idea was to fit as many people as possible into the Piazza, allowing to the Pope to give mass blessings. The colonnades themselves act as giant metaphorical arms, enfolding in the faithful.

It is a funny thing that Google Earth allows you to look down on some of the Holy Roman Empire's most famous and well-known works of architecture--the cruciform churches, soaring cathedrals, monastic complexes such as the Abbey of Cluny--from the same vantage point that the creators assumed their god would view them. Gazing down on the Vatican from above, one gets to marvel not only at the pure simplicity of the Piazza--the way in which it simultaneously invites and excludes, leading pilgrims directly to St. Peter's--but also at the sprawling apartments, halls and gardens behind the giant basilica, none of which are (or were) visible to the average pilgrim entering the Piazza.