The Vatican

Friday, September 18th was our last full day in Rome. We had reservations for an overnight train to Sicily so that we could have a whole day with Ramona, Jason and Aidan on Saturday. We saved the Vatican for this day.

There are many good guided tours of the Vatican. We chose the Through Eternity company and its 3.5 hour (as opposed to 5 hour) tour of the Vatican Museums and St. Peter's. We had plenty of time for the longer tour, but I didn't think we'd have the energy. I was right. We were exhausted by the end.

I don't have many pictures here because there were many places where we couldn't take them. However, the Vatican Museums official website has a great link to the collections online. One thing we learned about the Sistine Chapel is that when the Pope commissioned Michelangelo to paint it, he wanted it done with images reflecting the Hebrew Bible stories -- not the way they had transmuted over hundreds of years by 1508 when Michelangelo signed the contract to do the work.

In the last post we finished off staring at very large containers of Nutella. Below is what we saw the other direction at the corner where we met our tour guide. I took this picture for the traffic and satellite dishes.

Our tour guide, Ian, is a young Scottish (born in Scotland, raised in Liverpool) archeologist who fell in love with Rome and is making quite a good living doing these tours. Maybe someday he'll go back to grad school, but now he's having too much fun.

After we got through security, we went into the courtyard of the Vatican Museums.

The treasures of the Vatican are not all religious. The Museums have huge collections of paintings and sculpture. This is an Egyptian lion dated around the 4th century BC.

This is the Apollo Belvedere. It is a marble copy of the original bronze from the 4th century BC.

There were very few pieces that I particularly wanted to see, but the Laocoon Group was one of them.

Trout particularly liked this representation of Dionysius as an old fat guy. He's usually portrayed as a sexy young man.

The Belvedere Torso is one of the most famous works in the museum.

This Egyptian bath is made out of porphyry -- a purple-red stone used only by kings. It is exceedingly hard and difficult to carve. We later saw many small objects made of it, but this enormous bath must've been terrifying to create without breaking it.

I have a particular fondness for mosaics, so I found the Roman floor as impressive as the bath.

This is not the Sistine Chapel It is a long hallway between galleries of the museum. The walls are decorated with incredibly beautiful maps, but the ceiling really catches the eye.

We did get to see the Sistine Chapel. Even on a Friday during the day off-season it was very crowded. Pictures are forbidden.

After the Chapel, we went into St. Peter's. The last time I was here was for midnight mass, Christmas Eve 1977. That was quite the experience. I fell in love with Michelangelo's Pieta which is one of the most beautiful pieces of sculpture I've seen. This was before it was attacked and vandalized by some wacko, so there was no real division between the piece and the viewer.
Now it's behind protective glass.

This unfortunately blurry picture shows Trout with our tour guide. I think they were talking about cars.

These shots show the altar where the Pope celebrates mass and a close up of the window behind.

We had an excuse for taking the front pictures last this time. We didn't go in through the front. Still you will probably recognize these scenes. I didn't take any pictures of the Swiss Guards, but the link has some good ones along with the history.

After the Vatican tour, we sat outside and just caught our breath for awhile. We had lunch and took the Metro back to our hotel where we eased out until time to go to the train station to catch our sleeper train for Catania.