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Day 7 - Rome

On our first full day in Rome, Lacie and I focused on the ruins of ancient Rome. For our second day, we decided to shift forward in the history of the Empire a bit with a trip to the Vatican museums and St. Peter’s. From everything we read, we knew that the lines to get into the museums (and particularly to see the Sistine Chapel) were typically huge, so we set out pretty early in the morning.

As we walked along the Tiber, we passed by the imposing Castel San Angelo (built by Roman emperors as a defensive fortification, then appropriated by the Popes for their own purposes). After skimming through the relevant sections of our guidebooks, we decided to take the afternoon tour of the Castel (though we ended up not being able to, after losing a lot of time in the Vatican).

As we continued on our way to the Vatican, we came across a rather unusual bridge over the Tiber - it was lined with enormous statues of angels, each holding an artifact of some sort or another that we eventually determined to be related to the crucifiction (there was a spear, a crown of thorns, etc., as well as a whole lot of other things that I certainly don’t remember from Sunday school). Undeterred by this rather morbid display, we pressed on.

Once we finally entered Vatican City, we wandered around for a bit before finding the longest line ever (that of course turned out to be the line to get into the museums). During our hour-long wait in line, we made friends with a nice couple from Barcelona who were in Rome for the weekend. We also chuckled at some of the conversations held by others of our linemates - people in general weren’t happy to be stuck for as long as we were.

After we made it in to the museums, we made a beeline for the Sistine Chapel, passing through some pretty remarkable rooms along the way and justifying our lack of attention by saying we’d come back to them later. We zipped through the a room full of tapestries this way, and a hall of gigantic maps, and several sculpture galleries… the number of items the Vatican has “acquired” over the years is just astounding.

We slowed down a bit once we hit the Raphael rooms - a series of fantastic chambers painted by Raphael, including one wall that depicted various ancient philosophers and scientists gathered together in Athens.

The Raphael rooms were the last stop before the Sistine Chapel itself, which is a huge room. Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed with the Chapel - the ceiling is so far away that the expertise is hard to comprehend (though you can get a better sense of it from the walls, which are also painted) - and given that the images are all so familiar, it just wasn’t anything more than what I expected. The worst part of the experience, though, was that Lacie hurt her neck by looking up so much, and that sort of restricted us for the rest of the trip.

After we left the Chapel, we made our way back to the main entrance to the museums and picked up a nifty audioguide for the rest of our tour through the museum. Our first stop with the guide was a large courtyard peppered with statuary - monumental lions brought from ancient Egypt, giant busts of Augustus, that sort of thing.

Our next stop was a little more interesting - it was a statue garden. In one corner of the garden, we came across my favorite piece in the entire museum - the statue of Laocoon and his sons. I hadn’t realized the Vatican had Laocoon, so seeing it was a surprise and a joy; unlike the Sistine Chapel, we could get close enough to the statue to really appreciate how amazing a piece of art it is.

Some other highlights from the sculpture garden: Cleopatra on her deathbed, a sarcophagus decorated with scenes of Amazons in battle, a pair of boxers, and Perseus with the head of Medusa.

The room just behind the sculpture garden looked a little strange; it was a storage room for all sorts of animal statues (dogs, lions, goats, mythical beasts - everything). We got a great picture of Lacie next to an ox head pretending to be a cow.

Lacie was understandably a little more excited to be in the next pictures we took - we found the room of the Muses and took some of her posing with the muses of drama and music. She also got excited when we returned to the room of tapestries - some of them were done by Raphael’s students and were just stunning.

While she admired the tapestries, I wandered through the hall of maps - an amazing gallery in its own right. The maps were painted directly onto the wall and depicted the various regions of Italy as they were at the time of the Pope who had them commissioned.

Our last stop in the Vatican museums was the Egyptian gallery; I’ve always had a fondness for ancient Egypt, so I was really excited to see what is one of the most extensive collections of Egyptian artifacts around. I really liked the variety of canopic jars displayed, and some of the statues they had (both ancient Egyptian and of more Hellenic origin) were amazing.

From the Vatican museums, we made our way over to St. Peter’s basilica, passing the signs that forbade bare shoulders and knees, the rather imposing statues of former Popes, and into one of the most elaborately decorated buildings I could’ve ever imagined. Every available surface was decorated with something, and the quality ranged from exceptional (Michelangelo’s Pieta) to the gaudy (the immense bronze shrine under the dome).

We spent some time checking out the various statues of the fallen Popes - one of which had a reaching, skeletal angel of Death being defeated by said Pope - but were most struck by the supporting columns of the famous dome itself. See, the dome is held up at four points; in an alcove in each of the four supporting corner walls, there stands a tremendous statue representing a relic that the Vatican once held: St. Longinus’ spear, a piece of the true cross, St. Andrew’s head (since returned to Scotland, apparently), and St. Veronica’s handkerchief.

That last one, incidentally, is a little spooky. The legend is that Veronica wiped the sweat from Jesus’ forehead while he was bearing the cross, and forever afterward her handkerchief bore his image. If you look at the statue, Veronica is holding a piece of cloth that is engraved with a slightly cartoony image of Jesus’ face. It’s just a little… unsubtle.

That night, we made our way down to the old Jewish Ghetto for dinner, finding an amazing fountain along the way and having a great dinner. We walked around a bit after dinner experiencing Rome after dark (seeing the Synagogue, the temple of Hercules, the Boca della Verita, and a concert being held amongst millenia-old ruins), and then headed back to the hotel for some much-needed rest.

Day 7 pictures taken: 158
Total pictures taken: 448