Vatican and St. Peter’s, 3 June 2019

We arose early and headed out to the meeting spot near St. Peter’s. There were almost 100 people there waiting like us for the 9:00 entrance. We walked quickly over to the entrance, about 1 mile away from the gathering spot, always trying to keep the yellow flag in view. It must have been national school field trip day in Rome, because we saw thousands of school kids in groups at the museum. When we finally arrived, they scanned our cards and gave us tickets, and we were off. I found a map (which turned out to be quite useless) and we headed toward the Egyptian and Etruscan galleries. Apparently ALL the tours start in the Egyptian galleries, so it was massively crowded, though we enjoyed so many of the pieces. There were many fine pieces there, but we moved quickly to the Etruscan galleries which were way less crowded. There were many splendid pieces, and it was interesting to see the evolution of the pottery work over time.

We found we had to rejoin the herd, so met up with the flow heading toward the Rafael rooms, apparently stop #3 on most of the tours. They were indeed crowded, but most folks stayed only long enough to hear what their guide had to say. We read the signs and spent some time with the works. Rafael’s painted figures have a certain grace to them, and even though the figures are often muscular, they are nothing like the body-builder-types that Michelangelo often painted. They seem calm and inviting.

Then the herd moved on to the Sistine Chapel, which I have been looking forward to seeing since I last viewed it in 1974 before the big restoration and cleaning. I remember it being very dark and dismal. The new ceiling was vibrant and beautiful, with oranges, yellows, blues, greens, and reds that were so much brighter than what I remembered. I know that they did some serious work to match the colors to the Michelangelo original, and this looks like what he would have pointed. We found a place to sit on the side and just sat there for about 30 minutes, absorbing the beauty of it all. I felt a little sorry for the guards who mostly keep saying “move to the center” and “no photos” over and over to the hordes coming through. Most people seemed to walk through, look up a few times, and then continue on, what a shame.

We continued on to the painting gallery with the beautiful two-sided Giotto altarpiece, paintings by Caravaggio and more, and bibles in many languages including hieroglyphs!  We. had a quick snack, and then descended the beautiful elliptical staircase. I noted with annoyance how many people would get to the bottom of the stairs anywhere and stop to take a photo, not minding that people were coming up behind them. Between the selfie-stick and the go-pro camera, people spend way too much time taking photos or videos of things and not enough time actually looking at them.

We then moved over to the Basilica of St. Peter, a massive building, with all the gold and marble you could imagine would be in the church of the Popes. It was magnificent, and we went into the side chapels (some of which were as big as churches themselves), saw Michelangelo's emotional Piéta, went into the crypt of the popes, and listened as as Mass was celebrated (not sure how one gets in, it seems that people simply approached the security guy). The enormity of the dome was so different than Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence, or Notre Dame in Paris. It seemed somehow lighter than either of those, more airborne, less tied to earth.

Finally 9.5 hours after we started, it was time to go. We went to a restaurant Madeleine had recommended, but it was closed on Mondays. We found another that was well-rated, and had a lovely dinner of fried tuna balls, veal cheeks with red wine sauce for Barney and codfish with onions and raisins for me, plus some roasted vegetables, and a small tiramisu, and interesting wines.  We found the 492 bus which dropped us off hear our place, and came back to do laundry and notes. And now to sleep. Tomorrow, the Colosseum...