Adventures in Italy 3: The Vatican

On Tuesday, June 14, 2016, we headed to the Vatican. We actually couldn't physically squeeze onto the first subway, so we had to wait for the next one. We were still in close company.

Then we crossed over from Rome, Italy, into Vatican City, which is its own country, surrounded by a brick wall. We started off in the museum, which was pretty extensive.

I don't know what this is, but I wonder if it was the inspiration behind the Death Star?

There were a lot of cool statues there, so of course we all got in on some statue impersonations.

In addition to statues, paintings, mosaics (made of little squares), frescos (painted on wet plaster), and tapestries on the walls, there was often amazing stuff on the ceilings as well.

  

One room had a lot of animal statues.

Even the floors were often ornately decorated.

Erika added a caption on this photo.

There was a side exhibit with Etruscan artifacts. The Etruscans were the ones who lived in Italy before the Romans did.

Etruscan pottery such as this comes from about 500 B.C.

They had to use a lot of interpolation to guess where these fragments of an Etruscan chariot from 500 B.C. fit.

One of my favorite parts of the Vatican museum was this magic golden hallway, with massive tapestries on the sides, and glowing, golden artwork along the ceiling.

Here is a close-up of just one panel in the ceiling.

Some of the tapestries were big maps of Italy or its various regions.

And of course much of the art was religious, such as this tapestry of Christ emerging from the tomb (with St. George's cross on a flag pole?)

Here is the ceiling of another hallway (with a sign at the end saying Sistine Chapel, that-a-way =>).

Sistine Chapel

Finally, we got to go into the Sistine Chapel, which was really something. Various artists painted the walls around 1482. Michelangelo painted the ceiling between 1508 and 1512, in "fresco" (painting on wet plaster before it dries). He did the back half first, took down the scaffolding, decided the figures were a little too small from way down there, and thus painted the rest of them a bit bigger and bolder.

They wouldn't let us take pictures in there, though Sharon accidentally ended up with this one on her phone somehow.

Here is a diagram from Wikipedia telling what's where, and three more shots from Wikipedia.

This shot shows the back half of the chapel and gives an impression of how completely covered in art the entire room is. (This was obviously taken after hours, as the floor was completely packed with people when we were there).

Finally, here is a picture of the front wall, Michelangelo's The Last Judgement.  Note the little dark square on the right edge towards the top. That's what the painting looked like (from accumulated candle smoke and such) before restoration work cleaned the ceiling and then the walls between 1980 and 1999. It changed historian's understanding of what bright colors Michelangelo used.

We sat and listened to Rick Steve tell us all about the paintings on the ceiling and walls, and it was really something.

St. Peter's Basilica

Next we headed for St. Peter's Basilica, where St. Peter's bones are said to be entombed. (Although, he was apparently resurrected by 1829, so my guess is that they're not still there now. :)

We had to hike up over 500 steps to get to the base of the dome.

 

 Inside we were able to look through a fence down at the little tiny people below.

All around the dome and walls are all of the words that Jesus spoke to Peter in the New Testament, all written in Latin in 7-foot-high letters.



What do you suppose this is?

Zooming back...

Then it was another 300+ steps to the top of the dome, some of which was between the inner and outer dome so that you almost had to walk at an angle.

 Made it!

And from the top, you could see Disneyland!

Or at least, that's what that building sort of looked like.

Here is St. Peter's square, or circle?, or, anyway, the entrance to St. Peter's Basilica, surrounded by pillars and topped with statues.

Gotta love the colorful flowers formed into a crest down below.

 Back to the base of the dome, there were many silly pictures taken.

 

And a plethora of selfies.

  

But seriously, it was cool have hiked to the top of one of the biggest churches in the world.

Finally, we went back down and walked inside. It was massive and ornate.

Our cameras don't have nearly the wide angle needed to take it all in, nor would that do it justice.

There were sculptures and other artwork throughout.

I would look at something like this and think it was a painting...

...but on closer inspection, you can see that it's a mosaic, made up of lots of little squares of various colors.

One of my favorite parts was Michelangelo's Pietà, showing Mary holding Jesus after his crucifixion.

We all got postcards so that we could write home and mail it with special stamps from the Vatican.

After hundreds of years, the gate is still guarded by the spectacularly dressed Swiss Guard.



And here is perhaps the most overdressed parking attendant I have ever seen.



But, hey. Nobody steals anything in this parking lot. A guy with the confidence to dress like that (and wearing three gold metals to boot) can probably kick your rear.

I liked all the guys around the wall.

 

This guy was sporting a live seagull as a hat.

The pillared hallway around the perimeter of the entrance plaza was even amazing.

  

The Vatican was quite a treat, and I'll bet I could easily spend another day there without running out of new things to see.

And when it was over, we were starving, so we found a sandwich shop.

There many of us tried the traditional porchetta sandwich, which is made of pork, slow-roasted with stuff in the middle. It has been a Roman favorite for a couple thousand years. It thought it was great.

I loved how Rome had these little fountains all over town that you could drink and refill a water bottle from.

This house was really into ivy. Literally.

And here are a couple of invisible guys.

After that, we had no solid plans, so we consulted a map to see how best to wander over to a lookout near the metro at the Spanish Steps.

This bridge had statues along it.

And this statue had a seagull perched majestically upon it.

Everything's just so cool in Rome!

We took a leisurely walk down this nice, shady shopping area along the river. I sat and watched a soccer game with a random stranger for a few minutes.

Then we crossed a bridge and went continued along the other side.

We popped into a couple more random churches along our way.

And a guy was blowing bubbles in the square, for the kids to enjoy.

We hiked up to an overlook. You can see St. Peter's Basilica in the distance.

We got some gelato while we were up there, too.

Then it was time to sit and sketch. That was something Erika had said she wanted to do in Italy, so everyone had a little sketch pad.

This sculpture watched to see how the girls' sketches were coming.

I went on a little walk through Borghese garden.

There was a pleasant sunset that evening that provided nice light.

A guy was playing an electric piano and was letting other people play, too, so Erika sat down and whipped out the Maple Leaf Rag!

Finally it was time to walk to the metro and find our way home.

When we got home, we were again greeted by our Old Friend the Colosseum.

We hit a store on the way back to our apartment to procure some Crème Brûlée gelato (sounded better than it was, actually), and some pastries for morning.

Another exhausting but awesome day!

In our next episode we explore some catacombs and drop by the LDS temple on our way out of Rome, and visit the hill town of Orvieto on our way to Florence.