Dia Sei…Oh My God!

From the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museum, sadly we can't see Raphael's
self portrait. More about this in the blog.

It is always hard for me to set an alarm, and particularly on holiday. But today, I was happy to set it. One of the highlights of coming to Rome, for us both, was to see the Vatican. Dennis was raised Catholic and I am curious to see this powerful religious centre that has been both derided and celebrated for centuries, but no one can deny the influence it has had, and continues to have, across the globe.

Before we left Canada, I found out we could book tours of the Vatican. Then, through our friend Paula, we learned that we could actually book tours by the Vatican. It is not a quick purchase, so much a process. The Vatican books 60 days out so you need to be willing to get online 60 days before and keep trying until you find a spot. We booked one, a tour in English, that included both the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica and we are so glad we did, for many reasons that will become clear.

We leave our apartment and allow an hour to get into place 20 minutes before the tour, as requested. Well, good job we did. If you book through the Vatican Museums, you need to know that your confirmations will not include where to go as a meeting place. And if you are naïve, as we are, we arrive at the HUGE plaza in front of St. Peter’s Basilica and assume we will find the way, after all they do this all the time, so it should be easy to have someone point the way. We ask the uniformed guards who are taking care of the lines, because we think that they will have seen everything and show them our confirmation print out that even has the two crossed keys in gold that are symbols of the Vatican, but they don’t know where to send us. There are hundreds of people in the line that we know we don’t have to join because we have made arrangements, but where do we go? We ask more “official” looking people. “Through the gates OUT of St. Peter’s Square and to the left.” Really? We ask someone else, same answer. So we are now outside the walls of the Vatican and worried about missing our entry time. We ask a priest that is with a group. “Just keep going, against the wall” is his answer. We dodge a gauntlet of people selling tours and find a long line of people waiting to go somewhere that isn’t evident from where we are, against a wall. Someone says that if we have a tour booked to get in the right lane…I think it was one of the sales people, but it turns out to be the fast track and with 10 minutes to spare, we round the last corner and get fast tracked liked celebrities. Yay!

So, our advice, if you are lucky enough to get a tour through the Vatican itself, Google the entrance to the Vatican Museums and go there at the appointed time! It is an entrance in the outside Vatican walls and not off St. Peter’s Piazza.

Our tour starts with a beautiful and lovely tour guide called Daniella, who takes us into a little anti-room that is actually outside, and explains how the three-hour tour will progress, and the history and highlights of the Sistine Chapel, since we should not speak inside the Chapel itself.

We first tour the Vatican museum, which of course is much larger than we will see, but there are choices to be made on a time-limited tour. The rooms and sculptures and carvings are so amazing that we cannot begin to describe them. Just enjoy the pictures. At a mid-point we get to what are called the Raphael Rooms. These were the apartments of a Pope – the Dining Room, Reception Room, Bedroom (currently under renovation) and kitchen – who had Raphael decorate them ceiling to floor. In the final room, is a very important painting. It shows Plato and his pupil Aristotle surrounded by many other highly-placed people of the time in which it was painted. Raphael has put his self-portrait on a figure in the bottom right. More interesting to me, Raphael put Leonardo da Vinci’s likeness on Aristotle. At the same time that Raphael was painting these rooms, Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel. As they grew to know each other, Raphael painted Michelangelo into the foreground of this painting as an homage to his great talent. You will notice that everyone else in the picture is dressed in more ancient garb and are barefoot or in sandals, while Michelangelo is wearing boots and writing in a journal.

Something neither of us knew, that blows us completely away, is that Michelangelo had never painted before he did the Sistine chapel ceiling. Really, it was his first work in the medium and took four years to complete. He was asked to do it by the Pope because his sculpture was well respected. In those days you could not refuse a Pope. He spent several months learning colour mixing from other artists before he began. He started painting the ceiling when he was 38 and finished at 42. The other “Oh My God” moment was that he completed The Pieta when he was just 23 years old! His talent was God-given and thank God it was recognized and supported. Just to finish this learning that surprised us, Michelangelo was brought back from Florence to do the wall at the end of the Sistine chapel called The Last Judgment. He was 60 when he did this and it took him six years. His vision was to make everyone naked except Jesus and the Virgin Mary, because it represents the last judgment before God, so it makes sense. As the story goes, a Cardinal was upset by the nudity and complained to the Pope who understood Michelangelo’s vision and upheld the nudity. Michelangelo responded by putting the face of the Cardinal that campaigned against his work on a person in hell. Love it!

Sadly, a few centuries later, another Pope was successful in covering the nudity on the paintings in the Sistine Chapel and dismembering many sculptures, or covering the business end of men with fig leaves. What a shame.

In the pictures that I will post on Facebook, there is only one taken (illegally) in the Sistine Chapel where no photos are to be taken. I think this is really to try to preserve a holy atmosphere, and to keep the massive crowds from trying to capture everything electronically. It is a beautiful room, and we are grateful that it was commissioned, so we can enjoy it today.

We leave the chapel and move through the modern Christian art museum, but since this is not part of the tour, merely a transit, I take just a few pictures, but have no commentary or learning to add.

We walk past the “Holy Doors” that are opened only every 25 years, and move out to a terrace where we enter St. Peter’s Basilica. Oh My God, it is splendid, and huge, and lovely and…. It is hard to describe. To the right is the first alcove that contains The Pieta, one of the most glorious and beautiful sculptures by Michelangelo. It’s hard to believe he was this skilled at 23 years of age? Really! It is so lovely.

We go on, past the tomb of John Paul XXIII that has been moved to this level after his beatification. His glass-lined casket is displayed with wax covering his hands and face to indicate that he had not deteriorated after death until his crypt was opened – of course once the air hit the body it will begin to deteriorate, hence the wax.

We are blown away by the 400 foot alter that Bernini designed. It looks like wood, but is made of bronze. It is over the area that only the Pope can enter and which contains the coffin of St. Peter. Everything is huge, beautiful and at the same time somewhat intimate – at least that is how we felt.

We pass the statue of St. Peter, and like thousands of people before us, touch his right foot. The marble itself is worn thin by the loving touches. In this sculpture, St. Peter holds up his right hand and honest-to-God, makes the original peace symbol with his right hand!

We descend to the Grotto below the floor of St. Peter’s to explore the crypts of some past Popes. Out tour guide has told us that the basilica is built over the original church that St Peter built, or was built to celebrate him, and in turn this was built over Nero’s Plaza. In the centre of St Peter’s Square there is an Obelisk – what did I say, they are everywhere – which originally stood in Nero’s Plaza, when they started excavating to build St. Peters, they found the obelisk top, and dug down around it, then found evidence of the rest. The same is true all over Rome.

Another interesting fact is that many of the statues were originally painted, but lost the paint to the weather over time. This is hard to imagine, but fascinating. The Maya, and Aztecs did the same thing in Mexico.

So at the end of this Vatican experience, and it was an experience, not just a tour, I am impressed that in the Vatican museums we saw the sculptures that I would have expected to find other places in Rome…the pagan Gods and Goddesses, animals, celebrations of past civilizations. I am grateful that as victors, the Christians did not need to destroy these works, but preserved them for posterity. Many of the pieces in the Vatican museums came from the Coliseum, which was originally richly decorated. There was even a gallery of animal sculptures taken from Roman times. All of this shows a more humane picture of both the Roman Pagans and the Christians who “triumphed”.

All in all, this is not an outcome we get every day. I think few of us are evolved enough to be conscious that we don’t need to destroy our enemies.

Amazing! Now we are hungry and need a drink…the rest of the pictures (on Facebook) are of the physical side of this day, which has its feet firmly planted in the spiritual.

Loving this vacation!