There's a gift shop facing St. Peter's Square near the Basilica and there is another gift shop to the right of the Basilica entrance where lines to the dome form.
I much prefer the Ufficio Pellegrini e Turisti Gift Shop, it may have a tad fewer items than the Basilica gift shop, but it is much sweeter. I bought a red crystal rosary with chains running along both sides of the beads, and musical wooden Madonna-embossed box to store the rosary. The attendant told me to get code numbers for her, and that was it, she found the rosary, took it out of its container and let me look at it and touch it and feel the beads. She let me hold the wooden box and open it. She said what the tune is but i forget.
At the Basilica Gift Shop, i was upstairs and asked to see a red rosary, and the Nun dragged it out by its price tag, beads trailing behind, and put the price tag up to my face and
repeated "80 Euro," "80 Euro," again and again.
You think I can't afford it?
Oh, well it's Murano Glass and Silver.
Oh Silver, Silver tarnishes, I said, thinking I wasn't sure about giving my older brother a rosary with upkeep needed.
Whereupon the older Nun protested my comment in Italian under her breath.
The other Nun grinned and looked at me, smug that I didn't understand the other Nun. Oh but I did. WTF !!!
I never did get to look at the rosary or touch it, or get any sense of how the beads felt. All I saw was the price tag!
The lady at the Square gift shop had put the red crystal rosary in the box, and I opened the box, music playing, and walked it all the way to St. Peter's Tomb and altar in the Basilica. I know the energy in that place blessed that rosary for my brother.
And that is what it was all about.