The Vatican

After our fabulous tour of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum on Monday and we're excited to have our tour of the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica.  Our tour guide today is also named Barbara so it will be easy to remember her name.  Originally, we were to have Francesca as our guide for both days, but she was sick so the need for last minute replacements.

The Vatican is a separate sovereign nation, surrounded by Rome, but not a part of Italy.  Located on the other side of the Tiber River from most of the famous sites in Rome, it's a too far to walk from our hotel so we took the Metro over and met Barbara at 9:00 in front of the entrance to the Vatican Museums.  Fortunately, we booked our tickets and tour time on line or else we'd be standing in an extremely long line outside waiting to buy tickets to get in.

Standing in St. Peter's Square in front of the Basilica.
The Sistine Chapel is the brown building in the upper right.

Most of us non-Catholics know the Vatican as the home of the Pope and the seat of the Catholic Church. St. Peter's Basilica is the largest church in the world.  What I think most people don't know is the Vatican has a treasure trove of antiquities, historical documents, and priceless works of art.  Barbara walked us through centuries of world and religious history and art -- both mind-boggling and fascinating to see all of this in one place.

Without a doubt, the highlight of the tour was seeing the Sistine Chapel.  Painted by Michelangelo over a period of four years, it is considered my many to be one of his crowning achievements.  To sum it up -- awe-inspiring.  To think that he was able to paint at this detail and scale in the early 1500s and it still remains today is simply incredible.  Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take photos so I will have to make do with mental images and postcards.

Inside St. Peter's Basilica

After the Sistine Chapel it was out through a side door and into St. Peter's Basilica -- the largest cathedral in the world.  It took 120 years to complete and was completed in 1626.  Michelangelo himself designed the dome that sits atop the cathedral although he did not live to see its completion.  Dripping with Baroque ornamentation, there's gold leaf everywhere.  One of the most impressive things for me is that there are no actual paintings in the cathedral.  Everything that looks like a painting is actually a mosaic -- tiny pieces of individually placed tiles.  Unless you inspect it very carefully and up close, you'd swear it was a painting.

Another interesting item you see when visiting is that there are markings on the floor indicating the length of other world cathedrals to put into perspective the relative size of those cathedrals to St. Peter's.  The closest in size is St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and it still has a ways to go to match St. Peter's.

Our three hour tour with Barbara went by way too fast.  There's no way we'd achieve the level of appreciation we gained if we'd have done the tour on our own.  Given the throngs of people walking through - you're literally shoulder to shoulder -- we'd have been hard pressed to sort out what we should see versus what was skippable.  If you go to see the Vatican -- splurge for the guide.  It's money well spent.