7/1/12

By Jess

Today required an early start as we needed to meet our Vatican tour guide at 9am for our tour of the infamous city state. We reached the meeting point with about 15 minutes to spare and, once we'd worked out who our tour was with, got hooked up with our headsets and introduced to our lovely guide, Susanna. The Vatican was well worth the effort. We began by walking through one of the papal courtyards known as pine-cone court, for the giant bronze pinecone that Pope Alexander nicked from the Pantheon around 500 years ago which now stands overlooking the courtyard. In the centre of the courtyard was an amazing modern spherical sculpture in bronze of a giant sphere encasing a smaller one, visible through a giant rending of the structure, exposing a mechanical-like interior. This huge sculpture spins in the wind, and it was quite beautiful and unexpected in it's baroque setting.

We were given a detailed rundown of the particulars of the Sistine chapel in the courtyard, as talking isn't really allowed in the chapel itself, and our guide explained the compositional elements of the ceiling and wall frescoes by Michaelangelo and Botticcelli, explaining the techniques and time involved in the creation of the works. Following this we made our way into the Vatican museums which were spectacular. We were led through room after room filled with incredible frescoes and sculptures, and the galleries themselves were just astonishing. Particularly amazing was the 'map room' which is essentially an ornately decorated 125m long corridor, abour 20m high, depicting every part of the known world in the 15th century. Raphael's rooms were also exquisite and the whole of the museum was amazing.

We then were given around 20 minutes in the Sistine chapel itself, and it was incredible! Yet another major highlight of the trip was actually standing in the real chapel looking at one of the most recognisable images in the world. What was even more incredible were the works that make up the full roof of the chapel (of which Adam and God is only one panel) and the Last Judgement on the front wall. It was spectacular.

Whilst the Sistine chapel was brilliant, St Peters Basillica was mind boggling. The sheer scale of the place is really hard to get your head around, even when you're there. It's the biggest church in the world and it's 190m long and 50m high. Unlike the other chapels in the Vatican, the roof looks like it's fresco paintings but it's actually ALL mosaic! It's just so high up, and the mosaic is sooo far away, they look like paintings. It's all exquisite gold (solid, not leaf), bronze and marble and it really is amazing. Michaelangelo's famous sculpture of a young Mary holding the dead body of Christ was to the right of the entrance, and Pope John Paul's body/wax sculpture is on display, as is the previous pope. There is a sculpture in the knave of the vatican which is made of solid gold and must be at least 1.5m thick and over 8m high. The guide pointed out that even a small chunk of it would probably feed Africa. And therin lies the issue with the Vatican, it's a place of extreme opulence and wealth, housing some of the most significant art on the planet and responsible for over a billion souls worldwide. Whilst it's somewhat disturbing having that juxtaposition against other 'Christian' ideals like charity, humility and so on, it didn't bother us while we were there and even on reflection, since we already knew what the Vatican would be like, it was just an astonishing place to visit which was an incredible experience.

Our guide told us where to go for really good gelati so, upon leaving the Vatican, we went and bought gelati for lunch and then did some more shopping. Happily, after the Nike fiasco of Florence, Andrew finally found the right shoes in the right size at another footlocker near the Vatican. We spent some time looking for some cheesy Vatican memento's but we didn't find anything up to our required levels of kitsch. We continued with some shopping and then decided to come back to our room, update our blog and now we're going to head out for some dinner.