Same as the Last Supper, just because its winter doesn’t mean that you can waltz into the Vatican City. The queues were long (probably not as long as in the summer) and we managed to bypass them only because of our tour. There are lots of people hanging around outside trying to get you to take a tour with them or to buy tickets from them, so beware. Our tour was to go into the Vatican City Museum, entering the city itself is free and a different entrance and we did that after our tour. The Sistine Chapel is inside the Museum, so be prepared to queue! The Vatican City Museum was like a million museums rolled into one, Brian said it was the second largest museum in the world, the largest one is in St Petersburg. Apparently if you spend a minute infront of all the exhibits, it will take you 7 years to get out of there. We walked through so many exhibits on our way I can’t really remember the names of them all. There was one sculpture which Brian mentioned was the inspiration for ‘The Thinker” and another which apparently inspired Michelangelo for his David. All these little tidbits made our tour quite interesting cos we would not have taken a second look at those sculptures if Brian didn’t point them out.
As the Sistine Chapel is crazy crowded and you’re not really allowed to talk inside it, Brian spent quite a bit of time explaining the various paintings outside the museum to us. For some reason, I always thought the Sistine Chapel was kind of small and that the Genesis took up the whole ceiling but that is not the case. The Sistine Chapel itself is just full of paintings, with the Last Judgment on the end of the wall, 9 scenes from the book of Genesis on the ceiling, and another 12 paintings by various famous painters by the sides of the wall. Its kind of weird they don’t control the number of people who can enter the room cos photographs are not allowed but since there were so many people, its impossible to stop people from taking photographs. They should just adopt the Last Supper system and restrict only a certain number in and usher them out after a while, I think this way the paintings can be better admired. Honestly when I was standing there, I thought it was more like a fish market than anything else. Cant imagine going there in summer.
After the Sistine Chapel, we went to the post office to send some postcards out. We were quite lucky cos the guy actually wanted to close shop for the day but when we told him we justwanted stamps, he relented and let us buy the stamps, whew…
We then headed to St Peters Basilica to take a look. After watching Angels and Demons, I was prepared to be wowed and it is truly jaw dropping. It took more than 150 years to complete the Basilica and I can imagine why. We also saw the finished Pieta of Michelangelo in St Peters Basilica, which is actually different from the unfinished one in Florence. This Pieta only had Virgin Mary holding Jesus whereas the one in Florence had Virgin Mary, Mary Madalegne and Dionysisus. In any case, this Pieta was quite good and we think that Michelangelo is a much better sculptor than painter cos we were just not wowed by the Sistine Chapel.
All in all, quite an interesting day out, and how can you miss the Swiss Guards in their weird and colorful uniform?
P.S. We are actually now in Germany, and have finished Italy, Spain and zipped past Paris. We are just taking a really long time uploading our various posts cos we're kind of lazy that way :p
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