Vaticano

The Vatican made me sick.

Alright, maybe it was the muffin I ate for breakfast, but after waiting in this line for two hours to enter the Vatican Museum:


(Incidentally this is the wall that Tom Cruise scaled in MI3, and the sign that you can’t quite read says Vatican Museum with an arrow to the right.--->) I felt sick enough upon finally getting inside that we had to sit another two by the bathroom and so I could get rid of all the muffin and Rome tap water in my stomach. After that stellar entrance to the museum I proceeded to spill hot tea on myself in the cafeteria. Well, from the family I come from, a vacation just wouldn’t be complete without incidents like that.

We had originally planned on doing the entire Vatican in one day, but because we like to see things in a relaxed manner (or lazy, whatever you want to call it), we spent almost a whole day at St. Peter’s Basilica, so we had to return the next day to fit the museum in. We had planned on getting to the museum before it opened like we did in Florence to minimize waiting time, but after eating the muffin and catching the over-crowded metro we were about ten minutes too late and instead ended up arriving at the worst time ever, right after they’d let it reach capacity. I’m trying to capitalize on our mistakes here, because I hear those sell better, and as you might’ve gathered by now, the vacation was pretty much perfect and problem-free.



We entered the basilica not really knowing what to expect, and by the second glass coffin with a preserved cadaver, we found it to be far beyond our comprehension. We bought an audio guide. The wax-preserved cadavers turned out to be ex-popes awaiting sanctification, but unfortunately the audio guide said very little about this rarity, something I didn’t even know existed before I read “La santa.” (Márquez’ story is slightly more magical realistic with the preserved cadaver being that of a little girl who had died and been buried eleven years earlier). Apparently there’s a spooky little church in Florence that also has a preserved cadaver that we didn’t get to see due to reasons already stated.

Michelangelo was all over the place, beginning with his famous Pietá, that is, Mary with Jesus’ body in her lap. Unfortunately the statue is small, and it’s hidden way back in a corner behind bulletproof glass because an “axe-wielding fiend” (so says my Let’s Go) actually succeeded in breaking Christ’s nose and Mary’s hand way back when in 1972. The altar is a magnificent monstrosity of wood and bronze, apparently some of which is taken from Roman ruins. There is a bit of discrepancy on the exact location, but our audio guide and an annoying umbrella-wielding English tour guide said the Vatican also houses a piece of Jesus’ cross. Indeed, the basilica itself is said to be built on St. Peter’s tomb, and the obelisk in the middle of the square is the site of his crucifixion.

All this New Testament stuff is interesting, but the highlight of the day, besides eating peaches just outside the front door of the basilica and watching the Swiss Guard, was climbing to the top of the dome. There were a hell of a lot of stairs, and the Italians that said there were no stairs in Rome while we were in line to continue climbing the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona were lying… Regardless, we got to walk around the dome on the inside and see the artwork and mosaics up close, as well as look down upon the wooden altar and the people below. We then continued climbing in the space between the inside and outside domes (Michelangelo’s design), which was a weird dizzying sensation, because we were walking on a flat walkway, but the walls were curving inward. The view from the top was priceless (alright, 4€), and we got our coveted photos of the entire plaza and the unfinished backs of the saints that line the top of the church. Of course, there was a gift shop run by nuns on the lower roof. We ate more pistachios, but decided it was not okay to deface St. Peter’s roof with the shells. I think the Swiss Guards speak for themselves.





And finally, the museum (after two hours of reading/skimming all this text). Considering my condition, we decided to go straight to the Sistine Chapel and then go from there. Unfortunately, that is not easily done because the road to the Sistine Chapel pretty much encompasses the entire museum, halls and halls of religious art and thousands and thousands of people waiting to see the chapel. The Sistine itself doesn’t allow photos or talking or sitting on the stairs, but we took good standing, visual advantage of Michelangelo’s masterpiece that is the ceiling and the walls. And then we took good standing, visual advantage again when, after I spilled tea on myself, we realized we missed the Raphael rooms and we had to go back through the whole museum again. It’s unfortunate, but after seeing all these famous, original works of art and dealing with the amount of people that also want to see them, I think it’s almost better and easier to appreciate them by just looking in a book. It is rather exciting to be able to say, “I saw the Sistine Chapel, the School of Athens, the Birth of Venus, and the Pietá in Italy,” but I still won’t really begin to understand them or appreciate them until I type them into Google and stare at them for awhile in the comfort of my own home. Maybe that’s why I study literature. I am not talking about David.