Rome: Nov 29: Vatican, Saint Peter's, and more

On Monday, unlike our day exploring Ancient Rome and not wanting to wait in line at the Colosseum, I planned ahead. I bought tickets online for the Vatican. Hence, after breakfast and the metro ride to the Vatican, we got to skip the lines! :) Lines or not, I was disappointed the Vatican doesn't stamp passports.

I took a lot of pictures in the Vatican. They provide a good sense of the place. The Vatican Museums are vast, probably equal in size to the British Museum, which took me three visits to explore. We spent over 3.5 hours in the Vatican, and saw some of the museum only perfunctorily. Their collection is large and not limited to religious oil paintings, altarpieces, iconography, and religious artifacts. They also have an astounding amount of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan items, sculptures by Bellini, and numerous reliefs, tombs, and tapestries. Furthermore, offshoots of the museum have exhibits on Australian aborigines (!), the Vatican mail system, the Vatican monetary system, the pope's vehicles, and recent art. In terms of recent art, they have 19th and 20th century art and modern art, including Max Weber, Diego Riviera, and Salvador Dali, and also cubist and abstract pieces, all with varying obviousness of connection to Christianity.

In the postal museum, I learned the history of the Vatican's mail system. The Vatican issues about half a dozen commemorative stamps each year in honor of popes, saints' anniversaries, international events (olympics, world's fairs, eucharistic congresses). Interestingly and oddly, some of the stamps designed in the 19th century weren't ever used as stamps.

In the monetary section, I learned the Vatican used to issue its own lira (on par with the Italian lira) and now uses and mints Euro coins.

As for the Michelanglo's Sistine Chapel, it wasn't as impressive or awe-inspiring as I expected. Nevertheless, it's commendable for its size--it's a massive undertaking for (mostly) one man. Plus, it's nice to sit and simply take it all in. I was surprised to see that The Last Judgment (on the wall) has a lot of non-Christian-canon imagery. For instance, there are Charon and Minos from Dante's Inferno.

I learned that the Sistine Chapel was restored in the 1980s (yes, that recently) and that the restoration was controversial at the time. After using fancy imaging technologies, the restorers think they identified Michelangelo's original colors, separating his work from those of later restorers, and returned the frescoes to their original colorings. These tones were quite a bit brighter, more lustrous, than people were used to (after looking at the faded frescoes for too long), and many claimed these new colors couldn't have been what Michelangelo selected. The controversy, however, has mostly died down as experts have analyzed the data and techniques used by the restorers and agreed with the conclusions and result.

By the way, I decided I couldn't live in the Vatican. Everything is too heavily decorated.

Incidentally, Di Yin also took many pictures in the Vatican and out and about this day. The link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #311). When you see a picture captioned "Back at the hotel at last" (picture #464), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.

Hungry after our long stint in the Vatican, we hunted for food, eventually selecting Ristorante Pizzeria Porta Castello.

From lunch, we walked to Saint Peter's Basilica, traveling through Piazza San Pietro (Saint Peter's Square) on the way in. I know I've seen pictures of the square full during Christmas, but the piazza seems so enormous to me, I can't fathom how many people it can hold. Likewise, the basilica is a mind-bogglingly large space. (Yes, my mind feels boggled.)

From the basilica, we decided to walk to our hotel, stopping for dinner along the way. Though it would be a long walk (over an hour even if we didn't stop to look at things or eat), at least half of it would pass through parts of the city we never saw before.

We first walked along the River Tevere, which is quite dirty. On the other side of the river, we strolled by assorted sites, most notably Campo de'Fiori, Rome's oldest food market. Although we arrived too late for the market--the vendors had packed up--we saw that the area around it is exciting and thriving. Near the market we found a tasty bakery. After we finished our snacks from it, we decided they were so good that we bought more, planning to eat them on the plane the following day.

In this area, I wish I got to see Borromini's corridor ("perspective gallery") (scroll down a bit). It appears to be a great optical illusion, but Palazzo Spada, which has it, was shut when I passed.

We walked through the historic Jewish ghetto/quarter. The area is more a run-down version of the similarly medieval nearby area Campo de'Fiori but with many fewer shops. There are lots of kosher restaurants, however.

Tired, we stopped by the Pantheon to sit for a bit, then headed home, hunting for food along the way. But, we got lost, were frustrated (it turns we walked in the exact opposite direction we were supposed to for several blocks), found ourselves, walked to the nearest metro station, took it most of the way home, and found food for real.