Simon’s creation is being displayed alongside “The Art of the Brick”, an exhibit of Lego sculptures, and “Vatican Splendors“, which opens Saturday. “I knew if I was going to build the Vatican, it had to be big!”
Advertisement
The impressive structure is now on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, a museum dedicated to science, but where visitors are now invited to come and pay respectful reverence to one of the most iconic symbols of Catholicism. Simon spent about 10 months building it with approximately half-a-million Legos. His architectural feat includes a Lego pope on a balcony overlooking the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, which itself is made up of about 44,000 Lego pieces resembling cobblestones.
In this Friday, September 11, 2015 photo, shown are figurines in a Lego representation of the St. Peter’s basilica and square, at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
“I wanted to show a lot of diversity”, Simon told USA Today.
It features a mini figure of the pope waving to a crowd and an array of other figures from nuns with iPhones to robbers, characters with sombreros and Elvis.
Advertisement
Simon said he built his first, rather crude, Lego model of the Roman Catholic church’s headquarters when he was in seventh grade. He states that his previous attempts did not look anything like the real thing, and since he is 50 years old, he could have attempted a number of builds of a Lego Vatican. Still, he might have the chance to check out the Lego Vatican on TV or on the web as this fantastic piece of art is being heavily promoted. Unfortunately, the current word is that Pope Francis won’t be stopping by at all, according to The Independent.
