Gian Lorenzo Bernini did much to shape St. Peter's Basilica as we now know it. Outside the basilica, in St. Peter's Square, are the twin colonades by Bernini. Meant to represent the "maternal arms of Mother Church," the symmetrical colonades are four columns deep on each side. At the center of the square stands an Egyptian obelisk, "Christianized" by the addition of a bronze cross on top. The obelisk originally was erected in Heliopolis by an unknown pharoah during the fifth dynasty of Egypt, c. 2494 BC to 2345 BC.