After our visits to the Coliseum and the Forum our afternoon plan was to go to the Vatican Museum, see the Sistine Chapel and St Peters Basilica, well 2 out of 3 ain’t bad! More on that later, see this map attached below. You would think that with your audio guide these would be just specific locations, where you dial in the guide and listen in but that is not the case, each of those numbers represents a museum!. The Vatican Museum is huge and unless you plan on being here for weeks there is no way you can give it justice. Evidently, each Pope was a museum curator as well as leading the church.
We did our best with a relatively short around of time but nevertheless, we only caught a few of the museums in a relative quick survey. Some of the highlights below include three masterpieces by Raffaello, and unfinished portrait of St. Jerome by Leonardo De Vinci. The Museum is, of course, filled with religiously significant works. The three masterpieces by Raffaello depict the transfiguration of Christ, The Virgin Mary and the third, I forgot sorry sensory overload! The picture by Leonardo is an unfinished work, which shows some of his technique as he develops the piece. Also below some shots of the museum itself, including the huge corridors, which contain just some of the museums objects.
You are not allowed to take any pictures inside the Sistine Chapel, which is where Michelangelo painted his glorious frescoes depicting the creation, the original sin and redemption through Christ’s sacrifice. You stand in the center of the chapel and look up at the magnificent works elbow to elbow shoulder to shoulder with your fellow pilgrims. It’s hard not to exclaim out to your neighbor and companions about the beauty of the paintings but there are plenty of museum guards to remind the rapt audience that there is no talking. You can imagine how successful they are at suppressing the hoards. After our visit to the chapel and the museum we intended to go over to see St. Peter’s Basilica but the Pope had other plans for us. We have be seeing huge groups of youth, all representing their various countries with very distinctive hats and shirt. They are a massive moving body at every place we have been. We just thought well its summer and this is how it is but not to be the case. They are here to pursue peace in the world, a noble goal and they are all alter boys and girls. There are more than a billion Catholics and their numbers do not seem to be declining with this youth movement. So we got caught in this incredible mass of humanity and literally had to push our way out of St. Peters Square and into the freedom of the streets. It was scary what could of happened if some how a stampede got started people would of been seriously hurt. But all went well and, ironically, we got to see it on TV as the Pope made his appearance in this special event.
At night we went over to where the 4 rivers fountain is, which represented the 4 know major rivers at that time of its erection, the Tiber was obviously one of the represented.
Good night from St. Peters Basilica:)
Davitte Blog 