Take Me Down to Vatican City
For as unorganized as we are this year, the one thing we heard pretty consistently from people was to book tickets to the more popular sights in Rome in advance and skip the lines day of. From the comfort of my couch in Redmond, getting into the Vatican before an hour before it opened and having breakfast in the courtyard sounded like a pretty good way to beat the crowds. At 5:30 in the morning, still jet-lagged, the plan feels a little less solid.
Nevertheless, we’re out the door early and through the streets of a still very quiet Rome to meet our group.
In practice, the breakfast doesn’t get us into the museum itself before it officially opens but it does give us a head start as we are already through security and fairly deep into the complex by the time everyone else starts coming through the gate. The peace doesn’t last long though, as we only manage to get through a gallery or two before the horde descends, particularly the groups power walking straight through to the Sistine Chapel.
Even without the crowds the place is overwhelming. It really is a collection of museums all connected together and, were it one’s thing, it would definitely be easy to spend our entire time here looking at all the different pieces of the collection (the ones that are on display anyway). Tucked into every corner and crevice are amazing works of art, often by history’s greatest artists.
And where open spaces do exist, the buildings themselves are the art, comprised of soaring domes, decorated galleries, and intricate mosaic floors.
It’s all too much too much to absorb and impossible to convey in just a shot post so, like the power tours, I’ll skip right to the highlights:
This room is in one of the old papal palaces and was decorated by Raphael early in his career.
Down some steps, in a set of rooms abandoned after the rein of the Borgia popes is a collection of works by more recent artists such as Rodin and Van Gogh (turns out being the Pope is a fairly good gig as you can just ask for donations to open a new gallery and priceless pieces just roll in).
And, of course, both the roof and wall of the Sistine Chapel that were painted by Michelangelo (that make you completely forget works by Botticelli). The catch is that you can’t take any photos in the chapel, with Fuji somehow managing to snake the rights to reproduce them. Google comes in handy here if you want to see pictures.
Normally the tour we are on ends in St. Peter’s Basilica, but today the Pope is in the house and speaking to the crowd in the square. For us, that will have to wait another day, so we head for exit, past the mass of humanity still streaming in (the line to get tickets is 3 hours long, stretching down the block like a Disneyland ride.
Having started early we are back on the streets by 11:00am. With nothing specific on the agenda, we cross the river and spend the afternoon wandering through the streets of the city center. Plenty of gelato is consumed (the Lindt shop next to the Pantheon is top of the list so far) as is the occasional pizza. The proportions are probably still out of whack, but we convince ourselves that we’ve earned it 🙂
By the time we finally head back to the hotel, we have little left in the tank save for a glass of wine and a book on the balcony. Tomorrow we’re right back at it with a guided tour of the city center, putting into context many of the things we happened by today.