Vatican City, A World of It's Own

The courtyard of the Vatican

Our third and final day in Rome consisted of a tour of Vatican City. We were all pleased to learn that we had the same tour guide as the day before, Tyrion. Vatican City is it's own sovereign city-state located within Rome, it consists of 110 acres and nearly 800 residents, all of which have their own Vatican City passports. Vatican City is the smallest independent state in the world, is ruled by the Pope of Rome and is a World Heritage Site.

Laocoon and His Sons

We started our tour by walking into a massive courtyard with criss-crossing walkways and a giant, modern, bronze sphere. From here we entered the Hall of Statues, a long hallway cast with yellow sunlight and the busks of hundreds of long dead Greek and Roman nobles. We walked through room after room with ornately detailed mosaic flooring. We walked past the famous statue, Laocoon and His Sons, depicting the Trojan priest Laocoon and his two sons being strangled by serpents during the invasion of the Trojan Horse (read The Odyssey for more details). We turned a corner and came across the Belvedere Torso, a famous fragment of a nude male statue. The musculature of the statue was particularly influential to Michelangelo and Raphael who both modeled their work after it. The next room held the biggest marble bathtub I have ever seen; once used by Roman queens for their milk baths the tub could have comfortably held 10 women.

The Gallery of Maps, Vatican City

The next room of the Vatican quickly become one of  my favorites by touching on my quirky obsession, maps. The Gallery of Maps was commissioned in 1580 by Pope Gregory XIII and consists of 40 detailed frescoes of maps from ancient Italy designed and executed by the cartographer Ignazio Danti. Each beautiful map contains every little detail from the region including rivers, lakes, townships and mountains. Areas that include major cities such a Venice or Rome have a zoomed inlet with a detailed map of the city.The ceiling of the Gallery of Maps is ornate gold panels surrounding pastel colored frescoes. I could have stayed in the room for hours, tracing the lines and dreaming of ancient villages, but Raphael's School of Athens was right around the corner and my anxious group had already left me in their dust.

Raphael's "School of Athens"

The next few rooms were absolutely covered in richly colored, ornately detailed frescoes. The artists didn't leave a single bit of wall space untouched, even the molding and trim were painted over adding a 3D aspect to the work. The walls were so ornate that it would be impossible to take in every image unless one was to just sit in the room with their neck craned for hours and do nothing else but look. We eventually entered the rooms known as the "Stanze de Raffaello" which contain, among others, Raphael's famous School of Athens. At this point of the tour our guide was absolutely priceless. The work of art is amazing on it's own, but to have an expert explaining every detail of it's production and commissioning allowed the piece to take on a whole new level of meaning.  In the middle of the painting is Plato and Aristotle, to either side of them sit many famous scholars and thinkers including Socrates and Ptolemy. While Raphael was painting The School of Athens, Michelangelo was simultaneously working on the Sistine Chapel. After Raphael got a sneak peak of the Sistine Chapel he was so impressed that he went back in and added Michelangelo to The School of Athens, he can be found sitting on the steps in the middle, wearing a purple tunic and resting his head in his palm on a stone pillar. On the wall opposite the School of Athens was another of Raphael's influential paintings, La Disputa.

Next we entered the long awaited Sistine Chapel. They were sticklers in there, and yelled at everyone entering the room to both shut up instantly and hide that dirty camera. We walked to the back of the long room where our tour guide instructed us to look up and try not to drool on the beautifully tiled floors while he filled us in on the Chapel's history. While the entire Chapel is covered in frescoes, only the ceiling and the large wall behind the alter were done by Michelangelo. He was commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508 to repaint the ceiling which was originally a simple blue background with white stars. Michelangelo was known as a sculpture and architect but not a painter, he tried to decline the project but the Pope was persistent.

The Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo had to designed his own custom scaffolding for the project. He was commissioned to paint the 12 Apostles on the ceiling but he rejected the idea so the Pope instead allowed him to paint 12 biblical scenes of his choice. The panels he chose to paint depict the creation of Adam and Eve, the garden of Eden, the fall of man and the great flood.

In addition to the ceiling, Michelangelo also painted the massive wall located behind the alter. This piece is entitled The Last Judgement and actually caught my eye much more than anything on the ceiling, probably because of it's size and intense blue background. The piece of work is a depiction of the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse. The souls of humanity are judged and sentenced either up to heaven or down towards hell. The final thought I had while leaving the Sistine Chapel was that humans are capable of creating such beauty when we put our minds to it. Even though I'm not a very religious person, I still find it inspiring that Christianity has been the muse for hundreds of artists, sculptures and architects over hundreds of years. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe a German writer, artist and politician once said, "Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving." I couldn't agree more and my appreciation for Michelangelo has since sky-rocketed.

The 4-tiered dome inside St. Peter's Basilica was intentionally
designed to be smaller than the Pantheon out of respect.

Our  final visit inside the Vatican was to enter St. Peter's Basilica where we had to make sure our knees and shoulders were covered. The history behind St. Peter's Basilica regards the Apostle Peter (originally named Simon, a fisherman from Galilee). It is believed in Christianity that Peter, after a long apostleship of nearly 30 years, traveled to Rome where he became a martyr following the great fire of Rome. A shrine was built on his burial spot, followed by a church 300 years later commissioned by the emperor Constantine. Pope Julius II planned for a reconstruction of the old church in 1505 and the rebuilding was overseen by a procession of Popes for the next 120 years. The Church was largely funded by the sale of "indulgences" in which people would basically buy forgiveness for their sins. The Basilica, designed by Donato Bromante and Michelangelo, consisted of a large dome almost identical to the Pantheon but supported by 4 tiers. The most famous piece of art inside St. Peter's Basilica is Michelangelo's Pieta. The renaissance sculpture depicts an adult Jesus laying in the lap of his mother, Mary. The Pieta was one of Michelangelo's first works, and at first he did not sign it. But, after lingering around the statue for a few days and hearing only positive reviews, he snuck back inside and carved his name across Mary's breast. It remains one of the view pieces that Michelangelo ever signed.

The ornately carved wooden alter
at St. Peter's Basilica

After our tour of the Vatican and returning to our hotel to get cleaned up and rested, I set out to explore Rome and get some dinner with Alexa and Justine. We ate dinner at a quirky little restaurant that was shaped like a glass cube and our waiters were absolutely ecstatic to have American girls dining there. Over the course of our meal we enjoyed at least 2 complimentary bottles of champagne and some delicious complementary appetizers. Our waiter insisted on whipping up his own special dressing right in front of me for my salad and as we walked away the entire staff was waiving and smiling in our direction. We ended the night dangling our feet over an ancient stone wall while watching the lights come on at the Arch of Constantine.

Despite hearing reports of Rome being crowded and dirty, I couldn't have loved it more. The people were much nicer in Italy than in France, and the history of Rome just blew me away. The night life was amazing, the food was great and the public transportation was easy to figure out. Rome was definitely a success in my book.