Museum Shock

Miscellaneous Ceiling Fresco somewhere in the Vatican Museum

Even the lobby stairs are gorgeous

Nathan & I get overwhelmed by "stuff." Nathan even more so than me, which I suppose is fairly normal. (And I can appreciate this attitude since we do hope to be living on a sailboat in ten years' time.). I face the question of "how much is enough" anew with every visit to the amazing, beautiful, astonishing Vatican Museum. The place is chock-a-block full, including the ceilings, walls, and floors. Just one single room in the Museum could easily hold a day's worth of touring, study, and reflection. Name a famous painter or sculptor of old, and their works are in the Vatican Museum. Look down as you walk through the dozens of salas (rooms/galleries), look up - mosaics, frescoes, paintings, inlaid marble, gilding...just the actual structure of the museum is a treasure. Then there are the sculptures, the artifacts, the paintings. What I don't know, and haven't been able to find out, is just how much of the holdings are not and have never been on display. Museum shock, my term for when one's brain can no longer take in the wonders of art and architecture, happens quickly at the Vatican.

There are 53 salas, not including the Sistine Chapel, and we were on a two hour tour on a day when crowds were quite literally, shoulder to shoulder. Our guide apparently had a nemesis in the Brazilian guide, because she kept saying to us, "Let's move on before the Brazilians catch up." And when they did catch up to us, well, we got to observe Italian facial expressions in action. My two previous visits to the Vatican Museum were not on a guided tour, and I have to say, I much preferred the tour, at least on a day "in season." I would like to return in the dead of winter and take some time to look around with fewer people, but there is no escaping the fact that with so much to see and appreciate, a guide to focus on the best of the best was invaluable. Plus, we got to wear those totally awesome headsets that have become so popular on guided tours.

The Liberation of St. Peter, by Raphael

Miscellaneous Sculpture that looks like she's wearing lipstick

The final stop in a trip through the Vatican Museum is the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel is beautiful, and stunning, and does have that famous, Hand of God image. But honestly, gorgeous and amazing frescoes are all over Italy, even here in Naples, and we get to see them without having scary looking bouncers shouting "Silence" and walking around threatening everyone. For me, the most interesting thing about the Sistine Chapel was the information we got about it's restoration and cleaning, done in the 1980s and 1990s. After the cleaning, figures and paintings came to light that no one knew were even there under all that grime. For example, as God reaches his hand out to touch Adam, over his shoulder is a circle in the shape of a brain with a woman and children in it. It represents that God is thinking about Eve and her children before creating them. Wish I could show you a picture, but you'll just have to Google it. Do you know why pictures aren't allowed in the Sistine Chapel? Because the Vatican found a private donor to fund the cleaning and restoration, and the funding agreement included royalties on all Sistine Chapel images. That's why the mere hint of lifting your camera in the Chapel has the bouncer types rushing over and threatening to toss your butt out. And you thought pictures weren't allowed because it's sacred - tsk, tsk, tsk. Visiting the Sistine Chapel is an incredibly moving and holy experience, really.

A little tip for your Vatican tour - sign up for the one that includes the Basilica. Those were already booked, so we missed out. The reason is not for the actual tour portion, which is probably quite nice, but because the few extra euros it costs is well worth the "Secret Door" shortcut in the back of the Sistine Chapel that goes into the Basilica. If you're not one of the people on those tours, then you get to exit on the opposite side of the Sistine Chapel and walk through miles of corridors to the Museum exit, which is located right next to the entrance. Not so bad except that means you're now outside the walls of the Vatican and to get back to the Basilica is about a mile walk around the wall and a potentially long wait in a security line to get back inside. This can easily eat up an extra 1-2 hours, spent solely in needless walking and waiting, which absolutely infuriates the efficient traveler in me. I harped on the that stupid door in the days leading up to our Vatican visit and for the rest of the Rome weekend. I'm still harping over it. No one ever actually said the words to me, "Shut up about the door. It was closed. The end." But I'm pretty sure they were all thinking it. So...The End. I am letting go. After I put together my picket group to hang about outside the walls with signs and chant "Open the Door, Open the Door."

Strip away the crowds and bouncers and completely over the top opulence - this sculpture, for me, represents what the Christian faith is really about. And, I can eat my words about the "Door" because the sculpture is in an obscure hallway that functions mainly as a pass thru as visitors make their way to the exit after seeing the Sistine Chapel and all the "real treasures" of the museum. We would have missed it completely had we gotten to go straight into the Basilica.

More Rome pictures

Some more Rome photos to go with below post:

Oculus of the Pantheon's dome

Hallway in the Vatican Museum - a feast for the eyes, and we walked away well gorged

Mosaic floor in the Vatican Museum

Head of the Apollo Belvedere statue, a Roman copy of an earlier Greek bronze - when this statue was rediscovered during the Renaissance, it was thought of as the greatest, ancient sculpture and the ideal form of beauty

Closeup of lambs in Peter Wenzel's amazing painting, "Adam & Eve in Earthly Paradise," one of my favorites

The Big V

With Paige and Julia on their way home, I turned my attention to my aunt and uncle, and we started off two weeks of big adventures, from running to the Vatican Museum for our appointment time to exploring Naples to an overnight flight up to Venice. We also spent some time relaxing at home and enjoying the view. We'd scheduled a timed entry to the Vatican Museum prior to our drive home to Naples on Paige and Julia's departure day. I'd been extremely nervous about driving our station wagon into downtown Rome, so we'd booked a hotel on the outskirts that had a car service to the airport for Paige and Julia, but was also near the Metro for Mike and Katrina. Taking the Metro into the center of Rome, we walked to the Trevi Fountain, a Baroque flight of fancy marking the end of one of Rome's ancient aqueducts. The aqueduct was used in the Roman times for about 400 years. Reopened in the 1400s, Trevi Fountain was built in the mid-1700s to mark the aqueduct's end. Throwing a coin into the fountain is said to ensure one's return to Rome - a handy bit of marketing for the city of Rome, since an average of 3000euros per day is thrown into the fountain. We did our bit for the city coffers as well.

Pantheon

From there we walked over to the Pantheon, stopping on the way at a walk-up pizza/focaccia window and found ourselves eating a delicious, take-away lunch. This scenario repeated itself over and over - any time we just stopped in somewhere, we had delicious food. And yes, it is possible to get bad food in Italy, but I do admit that it's a rare event. A quick pop-in to the Pantheon and some gazing at the dome that inspired the domes of the Florentine Duomo, St. Peter's Basilica, and the U.S. Capitol building, among others, and then we set off for our Vatican Museum timed entry. I'd allowed 30 minutes for the walk, and as we approached 12:15 and were still nowhere near the Vatican, our steps turned into fast walking, then really fast walking, until at 12:25, we were at an all out sprint to make our 12:30 entry time. Thankfully, there was no line for security, but we were still almost 20 minutes late, flushed, faint, and dehydrated. Getting our entry tickets (thank you, kind entry ticket giver-outer for allowing us in), we collapsed on a nearby bench for awhile. Having walked/run what felt like miles already, now we prepared to stroll through miles of overstimulation for our eyes.

Map Gallery

I have never seen anything like the Vatican Museum. Whereas most museums have displays and exhibits, the Vatican Museum itself is  one of the exhibits. There is not a single, restful surface to lay your eyes. Every room is filled with glories, from the actual artwork on display to the mosaic or inlaid marble floors to the frescoed ceilings to the intricately carved paneling. We were following a tour out of our guidebook (Rick Steves), and while his tour is wonderful and focuses on the highlights, I can definitely see the value of a guided tour (although we would have missed that completely given my underestimation of walking time to the Big V.). We were trying so hard to focus, but there is so very, very much. I shivered to think that of all we were seeing, as overwhelming as it all was, these things represented only a small portion of the museum's holdings.

We saw breathtaking paintings, intricate tapestries, statues upon statues upon statues, carved sarcophagi, brilliantly frescoed ceilings, a 1/4 mile long hallway painted with 16th century map (see pic above), writing tablets dating back to the time when writing was invented, and finally, the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo's crowning glory and the commission he didn't want to take because he claimed to be a sculptor, not a painter. And yet, he painted the hand of God touching the hand of Adam, those two hands with outstretched fingers about to connect forming one of the most reproduced images in the modern world. I wish seeing the Sistine Chapel in person was a spiritual experience, but it's just not. Hundreds of other people are herded into the room with you, the noise level slowly building until the frowning guards start shouting out something that means, "Quiet," or making their way through the crowds to menace over those who ignored the "No Photography" signs, growling all the while. I can't say I blame them since they're given charge of enforcing hundreds of crowded together people to follow rules, but all in all, seeing the Sistine Chapel in person is much like going to St. Peter's Basilica for Christmas Eve mass and getting shoved aside by determined nuns on a hunt for their view of Il Papa.

Another big plus for paying for a guided tour...there's a shortcut exit from the Sistine Chapel that spits a body out right at the next stop: St. Peter's Basilica. Currently, this little door is open only to guided tours. So...although all we wanted to do was see the Basilica and then get to the Metro to get off our aching feet, instead we had to go all the way back to the entrance then around the outer walls of the Vatican to the Basilica, approximately a mile walk and and an extra, needless 30 minutes. But...it's all worth it to see Michelangelo's Pieta (Mary holding the body of Jesus just off the cross), sculpted when he was only 24 years old and as his first big commission. St. Peter's was built on the spot where Peter was crucified back in 67 AD or so. The Basilica is magnificent, and it's reconstruction into the grandiose church we see today sparked the Protestant Reformation.

It happened like this: When the Pope sent a monk to Germany to sell indulgences in order to raise money for the building the Basilica, a virtually unknown, German monk and theology professor wrote to his bishop a letter of protest against selling indulgences. The letter later became known as Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses, one of which asked why the rich pope was using the money of poor believers to build the Basilica rather than using his own. Luther believed only God could forgive, so the church was wrong in trying to sell forgiveness. Luther's letter was never posted on church doors in a grandiose gesture, as Protestant legend has us believe. Rather, Luther's friends translated his letter into German (it had been written in Latin), copied it off using that newfangled printing press, distributed it, and it made the rounds throughout Europe with great speed. The Reformation has a great deal more history behind it, but how interesting that the very church building which was supposed to symbolize the verse Matthew 16:18, "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it" became the same building that sparked one of Christianity's greatest divides. For the want of money.