We were up and doing well before the 6:00 am wake-up call, and among the first at breakfast, a pretty extensive buffet. And onto the Globus bus at 7:10, meet Marco, our guide for the day, and arrive at the Vatican Museum at 7:40. There were hundreds of people in the forecourt when the doors opened at 8:00 am - - and these are all tour groups!
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| We wait for the Vatican Museum to open, with Marco (holding the flag) our guide |
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| Marco explains and describes the Sistine chapel - no talking in there!! |
Entry for individuals is at 10:00 am. We walked through rooms of tapestries, ancient statues, frescowed maps - many things I'd like to have viewed longer - and into a courtyard for a lengthy explanation and history of Michelangelo's work on the Sistine Chapel. Other artists painted wall scenes and Michelangelo at age 33 began work on the ceiling, spent four years on the project at the insistance of Pope Julian II. Michelangelo insisted that he was a sculptor, not a painter, and in the end he returned to sculpting. When he was later ordered to paint the Last Judgment, his work was criticized by a Cardinal, and for revenge the Cardinal was depicted with donkey ears and a large serpent biting his genitals. What revenge, to carry down through centuries!
We had only 15-20 minutes in the Sistine chapel. It was totally crammed with people. Every few minutes the guards clap their hands loudly, tell everyone to hush, and remind all "No Pictures!" in loud abrupt tones. Quiet for a moment or two and then gradually the hubbub begins again. There's nothing I can say about this room. It is so famous and so renowned that all I can note is what an odd experience it was.
We had entered beneath the donkey-eared devil (Cardinal) of the Last Judgment. I looked for Botticelli frescoes among those on the side walls. One that I am sure was his is Christ being presented in the temple. I found a seat (they are along the sides) for a moment, the better for looking up, and then met the group at the "Stove Door" - the place where as stove is installed during the conclave - it burns the ballots for a new pope. And on that note, we exited.
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| Inside St. Peter's, looking at the side. |
And down corridors and stairs, and on to a door at the side of the front entry of St Peter's. Of course, the basilica is simply enormous - beyond imagining - huge, impressive, and very very baroque in its decoration. The guide, Marco, said that Michelangelo designed a renaissance building and would be very angry to see what it became. It is decidedly all "tarted up", with not a single surface unadorned with some curvy non-classical thing. So I agree with Marco. I thought of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC; how stunning it was when I was a college student, and it had just been consecrated. Simple and unadorned but huge, a rather stark space with an enormous red and gold masaic of the risen Christ in the semicircular apse behind the altar.
Studying the tomb of Pope John XXIII, the group moved on without me. I could hear Marco in the audioguide, but when I turned around, not a familiar face anywhere! I wandered several minutes before I spied his little Italian flag.
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| St Peter's Square from the front porch. |
And then in to the great St. Peter's Square - which isn't. It's an elippse or circle or oval, but it's not square. The piazza was full of chairs being arranged for the Wednesday audience with Benedict XVI. My overall impression is of enormous patient crowds of people and many many tour groups. Probably never a day without them. How many were pilgrims, how many were, like us, tourists.
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| More chairs |
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