All About Vatican City

Back to Tuesday: More about the Vatican City. We set off for Rome bright and early because the line to get into the Vatican museums always starts early, and usually ends up becoming blocks long at the very least. By the time we got there after getting off the Metro, there was already a line down the street from the entrance to the museums, but it wasn't too bad, about a half block long. There were all kinds of really irritating people hawking badly made products along the line though, such as awful Chinese-style hats ("to protect yourself from the sun"), fans (the man selling these was badgering an elderly lady in front of us for about 20 minutes to buy a fan because she was too nice to tell him to go away) and overpriced, cheaply made and flimsy scarves (because you're not allowed into the Vatican with your shoulders bared). You have to tell these people very loudly and rudely "No!" or "GO AWAY," or they'll never leave you alone.

It probably took about 20 or 30 minutes in line before we were able to get through the front doors. We got our tickets and then set off. There is a designated route for tourists throughout the entire Vatican museum (which basically takes you throughout the assorted famous buildings containing the four Stanze di Raffaello, the Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo's frescos, galleries of famous classical sculptures, etc). The entire Vatican museum is beautiful, but horribly overcrowded, and because we were only seeing a few specific things, our teacher was power walking in front of us to get to our various destinations. He had said we must absolutely keep together since it's terribly easy to get lost there, but we had considerable difficulty managing to follow him through the thick and slow-moving crowds gawking at everything in sight. The Vatican Museum made my heart race, but not because of beautiful artwork or anything, but just because of all the damn running I did!

Nevertheless, it was still a great experience--we got to see the Stanza della segnatura (the famous rooms with Raphael's frescos in the public papal apartments, including that of the School of Athens). This was a surprising experience, since in all the prints I've seen of the School of Athens, it always looks impossibly detailed. But the fresco is very large in reality, spanning the entire size of the wall that it is painted on, and it's really quite beautiful to look at. You can see Aristotle and Plato in the center and you can also see portraits of Michelangelo and Raphael--in fact, Raphael painted his own image onto the side of the fresco, and this self-portrait of himself looks back out at you. It's almost a moving experience to lock gazes with this master of painting from over 500 years ago. See beneath:



The other important part of the Vatican Museum we got to look at was the Sistine Chapel. This is the most horribly crowded part of the Vatican though, and so it's not entirely the most pleasant viewing experience. The Sistine chapel is perhaps one and a half times the size of a good sized basketball stadium, but filled almost shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists with their heads bent over backwards. Also, there were various very stern museum attendants chewing anyone out for taking pictures--even without the flash on. I snubbed this rule and discreetly took pictures anyway by hiding Natasha's camera in my purse, and holding it so the lens faced the ceiling while I depressed the shutter button. I got some fairly excellent pictures of the ceiling by using the timer on the camera with the flash off, although assorted body parts of mine occasionally protrude into the corner of some of the photos--an direct view of the underneath of my nostrils, for instance.

We were only given about 8 minutes to look at the ceiling before moving on to a gallery of classical sculpture--where we saw the famous Laocoon sculpture that was discovered in someone's backyard in the year 1506, and consequently served as the inspiration for newly dramatic, spiraling and theatrical Renaissance and Baroque sculpture. It was very exciting to see this particular sculpture. It represents the moment when the goddess Minerva sends two sea serpents to strangle Laocoon and his two sons as a form of punishment, and the three of them all die a horrible death. You can see where one of the serpents is biting Laocoon on his side. Pretty grisly stuff, but still beautiful!



After that, we left the Vatican Museums, went back out onto the street and walked down some ways to get to the grand Piazza S. Pietro, the enormous space in front of St. Peter's Basilica designed by Bernini (the greatest sculptor and arguably the greatest architect of the Baroque period). This piazza has three parts--a rectangular space directly in front of St. Peter that opens up into an enormous oval surrounded on both sides by a mighty, swinging double colonnade of Tuscan columns, and then an area that extends out onto a modern street that Mussolini installed during his rule (and consequently completely screwing up the original look of the piazza). See the picture below of the set up--the view is from the top of St. Peter's looking out to the other side of the piazza where the modern street begins.



In the center is an enormous ancient Egyptian obelisk that was moved there from another location in the Renaissance, and there's an amusing story behind the event. During the raising of the obelisk, in 1586, this was such a fragile and delicate operation, because if the obelisk fell, then it would obviously break. The sitting Pope at the time threatened that anyone watching or involved in the event who made a sound would be immediately executed, for fear of distracting the workers raising the obelisk. There were even gallows erected on site to execute anyone who did utter a sound. So the entire crowd that turned out to watch this ambitious undertaking was breathless and silent. But one worker bravely disobeyed the Pope's commands when he saw the ropes holding the obelisk were burning and about to catch on fire from the friction--he called out, "Water to the ropes!" The pope afterwards commended the worker for his bravery and gave him a reward (anything he wanted). The obelisk itself is 500 tons, which is basically a million pounds! So again, an incredible undertaking back in the late 1500s!

Finally we went into St. Peter's. They really are extremely strict about appropriate clothing when you go into the church, and there's a passageway where there are men in suits looking for anyone violating the dress code (shorts that are too shorts, bare shoulders for both men and women). They actually turn back people who don't meet the requirements. The interior of St. Peter's is so large that even with the vast amounts of tourists there, there's still plenty of space to move around. To one side is Michelangelo's sculpture of the Pieta, showing Mary holding her dead Christ adult child in her lap. This famous sculpture is in a side chapel, but completely blocked off with a wall of plexiglass to protect it. The plexiglass was scratched and pretty dingy, so one couldn't really get a good view of the Pieta, which was a bit of a let down. There was also a massive crowd of tourists in front of the plexiglass, so I just went, took a picture and left that area.

There is an immense amount of space inside St. Peter's--the height and width of it is almost dizzying. There's plenty of things to see here--Bernini's famous and massive bronze Baldacchino that sits over the high altar, which in turn sits atop the final resting place of St. Peter himself (the rock upon which the Catholic church is built), various tombs of various Popes and other important individuals, beautiful Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, and just, really, too many things to list. The Baldacchino is of special note here because it is deceptively massive--three stories high and crushingly heavy, 927 tons. While building this, they actually had to dig beneath the pavement of St. Peter's to make the proper foundations for the baldacchino, and in order to do so, they disturbed the resting places of holy relics and tombs of saints. The columns of the baldacchino that you see extend deeply into the pavement beneath the church. It was a pretty controversial undertaking at the time. See the baldacchino beneath:



There's much more I could say about St. Peter's--Michelangelo's Dome, the marbled patterns in the floor, but there's just too much to look at there. Overall, there's a sense of overpowering grandeur and opulence here, not that that's necessarily a bad thing. St. Peter's Basilica is essentially the symbol of the power of the Catholic Church, and an impressive symbol at that.

On the way out of the Vatican, along the street are many touristy stores hawking many products relating to Vatican City. There's all kinds of absolutely bizarre things that one can purchase from these stores--bottles in the shape of the Virgin Mary to hold holy water, holographic pictures of Jesus on the cross where he opens and closes his eyes (extremely creepy and deeply disturbing), and bottle-openers that are shaped like the Pope's head.