Rome - Day 3

We set off early the next day, to walk westwards across the Tiber for about a mile to the Vatican City and St Peter's Square and Basilica.

St Peter's Square is one of those large impressive pieces of architecture that you can't see until you're right inside it.



Something about seeing priests travelling in large groups, and posing for photographs in the square (you can just about make out a group in the photo below) made me think of "Father Ted".



Queued for about 20 minutes to get inside St Peter's Basilica. Apart from the richly carved doors, the outside of this building only gives a few clues as to how over-ornate the inside is. Too much detail for the eye to take in. I soon began to realise that rather than being a big fancy church the whole place is in reality a splendiferous Papal Mausoleum. A bit like the Valley of the Kings, but for Popes, rather than Pharoahs.

I couldn't help but think that here's a religion that's really missing the point. The people that built this place would have definitely picked the wrong cup from the choice of possible Holy Grails.





People were falling down at their knees in front of altars to various deceased Popes. Some seemed to be more popular than others. At one point during our exploration we descended to the basement and tiptoed past a large crowd, kneeling at a big white slab under which lay the last John-Paul.

One of the spookiest, and most unbelievably fantastic sights is a monument to Pope Alexander VII by Bernini. Over a doorway to a chapel is what looks like a drapery of cloth - but is actually carved from marble. Not quite fully emerging from the cloth is a skeleton carrying an hourglass.




Most people were spending their time wowing at this sculpture, and completely ignoring the alter next to it, that commemorates the spot where the concept of the Immaculate Conception was defined.

Here's a picture of me. The chap wearing the crown that I'm standing in front of is Atilla the Hun



One thing that I didn't want to miss was The Sistine Chapel. It took us a while to figure out that you couldn't get to it from St Peter's, but instead had to go out of St Peter's square, and around the walls to the Vatican Museum - the Chapel features as part of the Museum - therefore attracting a fee to get inside it.

As we walked around the walls of the Vatican we came across a few beggars. We'd seen some the previous day too, hanging around some of the major sites. Not nearly as many as I remember from the last time I was here, but that was in the middle of the summer, and this time we were "off-peak".



We stopped off at a post office to post some postcards back home. Two were for Frodo and Samwise, with pictures of Gladiator helmets. Sat in the queue hastily trying to look up the Italian for "Stamp". It turned out to be "Stampe".

Paid our Euro's to get into the Vatican Museum, and started our trek, following signs for "Capella Sistina", through gallery after gallery of statues, paintings, frescoes, mosaics, pottery and other booty that the Popes have looted and stored throughout the centuries.

As is often the way with large collections like this, much to much to see and take in. You follow the crowd like herds of sheep heading for the Sistine Chapel, which is situated at the very end of the Museum.

We were really impressed with the Gallery of Maps - where the whole of Italy is painted as relief maps onto the walls. No pictures here, but we liked this place so much that we bought a book. There was a particularly good fresco of the Battle of Lepanto

After the Gallery of maps was a choice - either a shortcut to the Sistine Chapel, or a tour through the apartments of the Borghias i.e. the Raphael Stanze
We went for the tour. Glad that we did since the frescoes in these rooms were fairly spectacular. No pictures allowed again here (understandably). My favourite was The School of Athens, which is a who's who of artists and philosophers. The rest were various battle scenes, depicting the victories of Constantine, plus some other historical wars (I think that our pal Atilla featured again). Muscle bound blokes wearing gossamer shorts were a recurring theme - we tried to figure out if the shorts had been painted on afterwards as some sort of modesty adjustment.

Finally we arrived at the large, barn-like structure that is The Sistine Chapel. Immediately we joined the throngs of people milling about, getting a stiff neck by looking upwards. Michelangelo's ceiling artwork is everything it's cracked up to be - Literally as you can see where a couple of lumps have dropped out. The most famous centre piece with the Hand of God giving life to Adam has obviously dropped away in the past and been repainted by somebody else. The colours are really vivid, and the style is better and different to anything else that you've seen up to this point.

Obviously no camera shots allowed in here. There are seats around the edge of the chapel, so we found a gap and carried on gazing.
One picture was amusingly described in the Rough Guide as "God creating the Sun and Moon (and inadvertently creating a second Moon)".

On one of the end walls is a fantastic fresco called The Last Judgement. The blue of the background first catches your eye (the picture in the link doesn't do it justice), then you simply spend ages looking at the angelic and demonic figures fighting over posession of the figures representing souls.

There's a constant murmuring in the Chapel, as everybody discusses what they're looking at. This murmuring rises in volume every two or three minutes, at which point a loud "shhhhhhhhhh!" is issued by the Chapel guardians, and the murmuring dies down again.

We had about half an hour or so in here, before we were chased out. The Vatican museum closes at 13:30 in the early season, and on particular days, and at 15:30 on other days. We were visiting on a 13:30 closure day. Luckily we'd seen all that we wanted to see, unlike some who were arriving a little late and barely had time to step through the door, before they were ushered out of the other side. At least we got to see it. I've heard from relatives, and others that they'd missed seeing the Sistine Chapel because they got there too late.

Trekked back out of the museum, past lots of cabinets full of Papal Treasures that the staff were busy closing. We had time to eat in the Vatican Cafe before we left the museum - there wasn't a lot left, we had pasta, a cake and a drink. Couldn't help noticing that a couple of Priests on a nearby table, served by the same person, got a significantly larger portion than us.

Left the museum via a fantastic spiral staircase.



We left the Vatican and headed for the Castel Sant'Angelo. This was originally Hadrian's Mausoleum (ye knaa, the gadgee that built wor waall), but later became a treasure store for the Popes (there's an enormous treasure chest in one of the rooms), and a fortress.



I'd been here once before in 1984, probably because it's free entrance to students. A spiral tunnel, that was originally the funerary processional entrance leads into the heart of the castle.

You then find yourself wandering around several rooms, levels and bastions. At one point there's an enormous, stone ball flinging ballista.



There's a few museum pieces of armour and weapons. I was pleased to discover one that I remembered well from my last visit. It's a sword that has a flintlock pistol built into the handle, so that you can sneakily draw a sword, then shoot your opponent.

Finally we ended up on top of the castle, where there's a huge statue of St Michael drawing his sword (he was supposed to have been spotted up here, doing this at the end of a Plague).



There are some good views of St Peter's from here.



This is looking across Rome towards the Colusseum (although a dirty great 20th century monument gets in the way).



In front of the Castle is a bridge over the Tiber, The Ponte Sant Angelo, adorned with statues that reminded me of Charles Bridge in Prague.



The camera battery was drained at this point, so we didn't get any more pictures.

Headed back to the hotel. Decided we were too knackered to go hunting out a decent restaurant - so bought some snacks from a nearby shop and ate them in the hotel room, then debated what we would do on our last full day before we crashed.