Popes and Pizza

Graffiti. Colors and Italian words scrawled on a once-white metro. People crammed inside it like sardines. Stepping inside, the silence is only broken by a few small laughs and some Americans. I grip a central pole with my right hand, which is drenched in sweat. It stinks. Bad. I see now why mom calls Rome 'dirty.' I am relieved to step off the metro. Even the dank air of the tunnels smells fresh now. I climb the steps and follow my dad towards our apartment.

That was probably the worst part of Rome, but it was also my first look at Ro. Now that I've got that off my back and I can talk about the good stuff. 

The Vatican. It is the smallest country in the world and has an amazing art collection, a huge church that is the epitome of the Baroque style (gold, marble,... gold), not to mention the Sistine Chapel. Was I excited, you may ask? WELL, YEAH!!! 

Getting to the Vatican was easy. Dad was using a map, but honestly for this endeavor, I don't think that he needed one. All he needed to do was follow the tourists. Trust me, tourists aren't hard to find. Americans with big cameras and bright backpacks flooded the metro stop by the Vatican. It didn't help that vendor dudes were selling umbrellas and ponchos on the stairs. And, mind you, these were some narrow stairs. People were lining up to buy the cheap rain gear. Fortunately, since we live in Oregon, we were prepared for the rain with our heavy-duty raincoats.  Following the tourists (the ones that had bought their ponchos elsewhere) we found a wall. A big one. It was very fortified and everyone knew that this was the Vatican. The line was huge and small children were picking their noses in boredom. Luckily, dad had reserved tickets for us, so we got to skip the line. Yea dad!

The Papal wall

 The Pope's palace was huge and there is no possible way to describe it all other than the fact that it was huge and that every ceiling panel was a work of art. I will describe my personal highlights of the palace. 

The palace had many rooms of excellent Ancient Roman and Greek and Ancient Roman and Greek styled sculpture. One of the rooms was and outdoor garden containing ancient Roman reliefs set into the walls and coffins serving as the decor. In one of the rooms after this, the constant flow of people slowed. Presently, we came to the center of the room and there stood the Belvedere Torso, worn smooth by his hands. Believed to be dating back to the first century BC, it inspired many artists,  including Michelangelo, and you can certainly see why. The figure's pose is contorted and all his muscles bulge.

The Belvedere Torso

We passed through many more sculpture rooms including a circular room with twenty and thirty feet tall (ish) statues around a huge purple tub.

a large bust in one of the sculpture rooms

The other rooms all had fantastic paintings on the walls. You could see the excitement building for the sistine chapel. We were herded quickly through rooms with magnificent Renaissance paintings upon the walls. I tried to stop and look at some, but the guards glared at me and said "Keep moving, keep moving. Quicker, please." Ugh. The group (the whole flow of people, which was HUGE) was then funneled into a narrow walkway overlooking the Pope's parking lot. Everyone (especially old people) pushed and shoved like small schoolchildren to get to the front of the line, to be the first to get a glimpse at the Sistine Chapel. But the tunnel didn't lead to the chapel.

Being herded like cattle through this tiny tunnel

The Papal parking lot

The tunnel led to the Raphael Rooms. Let me tell you, they were cool. explosions of color and thought spread across the walls. But my favorite of all the painting in the Raphael Rooms was the School Of Athens. It showed many great artists and thinkers as Athenian philosophers. In the center stands the great Leonardo Da Vinci.

School of Athens. You have no idea how hard it was to get this good of a picture!

From the Raphael Rooms, we headed down some stairs where apparently, the Pope keeps his modern art. In a rush to see the Sistine Chapel, tons of people walked by works by Matisse!

Matisse Madonna and child

I remember, some time ago, when I was in the third grade, my class was very loud. They would talk until the class room was filled with an uproar of noise. When the teacher shot us a glare, some of the students would start shushing their classmates, which only resulted in an even louder classroom.

The Sistine Chapel was much like that. People looked to the ceiling and the wall, stopping in awe at all the color and muscle and detail, murmuring to themselves and their companions. The Vatican guards tried to rush us along to get as many people in and out of the chapel as quickly as possible. Every few minutes they would issue a loud SSSSSHHHHHH and the noise just got louder.

Ignoring that, the  Chapel was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. And I'm not saying that just to make this blog post longer or to convince you of it's awesomeness. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen. The colors of the ceiling contrasted perfectly with the colors of Hell in the last judgement. Michelangelo's muscled figures, all painted completely by his own hand, amazed me with their intense detail. Sadly, the Sistine Chapel was the only place in the museum where you couldn't take pictures. :(

After the chapel, we passed through many rooms filled with renaissance paintings including Raphael's Transfiguration of Christ.

Transfiguration

Garden of Eden

 The museum even held an unfinished work by Leonardo Da Vinci, giving some insight into Leonardo's technique. 

Leonardo's unfinished work

 After many, many, paintings, we turned down a tiny, very uncrowded hall with paintings of wild animals attacking each-other and some very pretty angel statues. I don't know anything about them, but they were pretty. The hallway led to a tiny room with an altar from the middle ages surrounded by glass cases full of tiny pieces of art from the same period.

angel (:

In another slightly larger hallway were gorgeous angel frescos saved from a demolished church. Honestly, they were probably the most beautiful faces I've seen on the whole trip. They actually looked angelic.

angel face

A few hallways contained gifts for the Pope. One of them was a Vatican flag that had been on the moon with some moon crumbs.

The Pope's moon bits

After seeing the bulk of the paintings (and other stuff), we came into a garden, then a room filled with the Pope's stuff from around the world. The collection included Indonesian shields, a commemorative boomerang, and a bunch of other interesting stuff.

I call this one the King of The Birds crown

We then found the museum's pizzeria, which sold pizza by the slice(they were generously sized slices). In one corner of the room there was a Nutella stand that sold Nutella in crepes, Nutella shirts, etc. Sean,  must share his love of Nutella with the Pope because why else would there be a Nutella stand in the Vatican.

After lunch, we headed down an intricately decorated spiral ramp. I touched all the Pope hats (crowns?) on the way down. Once outside the Vatican's walls again, we started following another crowd to St. Peter's Basilica. 

Spiral ramp

The clouds were still grey when we got to St. Peter's, so we wanted to get inside as quickly as possible. Unfortunately though, there appeared to be a line into the church that wrapped around the church's 'arms.' It looked as if an event had just ended or was just about to begin because their were many rows of grey chairs and a stage. I was worried. There was no way to skip the line, so we had to wait. Luckily, the line went faster than I thought it would and it did give me the opportunity to get some nice shots of the outside of St. Peter's.

St. Peter's Basilica

 When we first walked in, the view was absolutely breathtaking. Marble of every color and pattern made huge columns and the folds of winged babies chubs. The babies themselves  were the size of full grown men. I can only imagine how big the angels on the ceiling were. The flow of the crowd brought us to the right side bottom corner of the church where we saw two things of interest. The first was a concrete wall. Well, it looked like a wall. But as it turns out, every twenty years on Christmas, the Pope knocks on the concrete (with a special hammer), which covers a door. He knocks it down to get in, then bricks it up again for another twenty years.

door covered with concrete

 The other noticeable thing in this corner was Michelangelo's Pieta. It was far back in a huge glass case and surrounded by people, so it was a miracle that I got a good picture. Michelangelo's Mary in my eyes was simply stunning. The sculpture was by far my favorite thing in the church

Michelangelo's Pieta

The other corners were filled with elaborate marble tombs. Every manner of angel, putti, Greek god, cardinal, pope, and flying baby head seemed to be there. 

This, surprisingly is one of the more modest tombs

There were A LOT of domes in the church.

one of the side domes of the church

The main altar was HUGE. It was made from metal stolen from the Pantheon's ceiling and is very ornate. It is slightly off center from the rest of the church because it is said that it is over the exact spot that St. Peter was buried.

The main altar

On the way out of the church, everyone rushed to see the changing of the guard. It was funny to see men in such silly outfits acting so serious. Well, except for when they sneeze.

(:

On the way home, we visited the Trevi Fountain. I hope that I will return to Rome someday!

The magnificent Trevi Fountain

  

Well, that was the Vatican! Thank you for reading!

Ciao!

-Hailey