Back to the Vatican

On day 4, my last day in Rome, I was headed back to the Vatican. This time it was to go to the museums, and of course to see the Sistine Chapel. Even though I'd gotten there well before they opened at 10am, there was still quite a queue. I prepared myself for a long and arduous wait, but was surprise to actually be through the doors a few minutes after 10. There was a little judicious moving around big tour groups, but I managed it nonetheless.

One thing I have to say about the tour is that once you get started, the guide is easy to follow, but it's finding that starting point that's difficult. I ended up having to double back from where I'd started from, as the natural progression was to go out to the courtyard and then into the busts gallery. There is no possible way I could have remembered all of the works that I saw, even if I'd had the time to take notes on all of them as I went through. I spent a little time in the busts gallery, seeing statues of Artemis and Ocean, amongst many others. I then realised that I wasn't in the right spot and was going to cut off vast areas of the tour, so went back through the courtyard to start again
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This time I headed up the stairs, and found myself in an Egyptian gallery. Honestly, I feel like I've seen so much of Egyptian history and culture without ever stepping foot in Egypt itself! The thought did occur to me whilst I was standing in front of a mummy laid out with the funerary objects that it would require in the afterlife, that there was a certain kind of hypocrisy about one religion who is so adamant and rigid about its own beliefs allowing relics of a different religion to be displayed in what is supposedly the most holy of places.


From the Egyptian rooms I went into some kind of garden - I have a vague memory of the name of it being something to do with an octagon, but I may well be making that up. There were statues and what looked like bathtubs in every corner, and ponds in the middle. I sat down at a bench to take a moment to absorb it all, and literally got shoved off the seat by some fat American woman as she sat down to rest her th-cankles. I took it as a sign and moved on.


What followed for the next few hours were endless rooms filled with statues, scultures, paintings and beautiful ceilings. If my neck wasn't already sore from the previous few days of staring up at various works of art, it would have been stuck permanently at an odd angle after this. I'm not sure if the ceilings are designed the way they are for effect, or if they simply ran out of room on the walls and wanted to fill up more space. Either way, the mix of art and architecture is sublime.


This is actually a tapestry. There was a room filled with massive scenes, depicting various battles and religious wars. Amazing.



This one looks curved because it wasn't on a wall, it was on the roof.

I can't even remember most of the history that goes along with the museums there. I was doing the audio tour, so I got lots of information, but it reached the point of overload well before I was even halfway through. I'm sure I could look it all up again and do the research, but to be honest, I'm not interested enough in it. I liked a lot of what I saw, but it meant nothing to me for it to have been created by Raphael or one of his students. I do remember the tapestry room and the Gallery of Maps, but a lot of what else I saw is a blur. Goes to show once more that art really isn't my thing!

This statue freaked me out. It was the only one I saw all day that had proper eyes, and it was just strange!

Eventually I got through the hundreds of rooms, apartments, and everything else, and was close to the Sistine Chapel. Before that though, much to my amusement, was a modern art gallery. I took a couple of photos which help to demonstrate my point - the statue indicates how I feel about modern art, and the "painting" beneath it shows... I'm not sure what, exactly, it shows. But it's art, apparently.



The only reason I could come up with for including the modern art where they did was that it juxtaposes nicely with the awe-inspiring creations in the Sistine Chapel. Thank God (no pun intended) that I can play stupid in several languages - they don't allow any photography in the chapel, but I did manage to get away with a few happy snaps. I didn't know the history of the art in the chapel (I knew of its fame, but that was about the extent of it), so I finagled myself a seat and sat back, listening to the audio guide give me the brief version of the history of it all.



Eventually the seething mass of humanity that was filling the small space got to me, and I headed out. Once again I went through long corridors of statues, paintings and wondrous celings, before finding myself at the exit. There was one job to do before that - send a couple of postcards so that my nan could have a new stamp from the Vatican for her collection. I'd have been in some serious trouble if I'd have come home without getting that! I also admired the design of the staircase - it's massive! Turns out my dodgy camera struck again, and the photos turned out blurry, so I stole someone else's to post on here.




When I finally got outside, it was time for a very late lunch. I found a little restaurant in a quiet street and had yet another pasta dish - lucky I was walking so much, as I was eating my body weight in carbs!