Trips

Sat., 7/11/15 – Rome and Vatican City
            This morning we visited the Vatican.  They say that 24,000 people tour the Vatican every day.  It seemed that there were at least that many there today!  Our group of 8 had a reservation so we could pass the long lines outside but we still stood in mobs of people to get our "whispers" outside, enter, and wait while our guide picked up our tickets.  Once through the turnstiles, our Vatican guide did a good job of herding us through the Vatican garden, museum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica.  It was worth the cost of the optional tour.
            We started in the Vatican Garden, which was mostly grass lawns with several stations of posters of the art in the Sistine Chapel.  Antonella gave a wonderful explanation of the frescoes and what we would be seeing later.  The building along one side of the garden is the Pinocoteca.

Vatican Coat of Arms	Entrance to the Vatican Museums
Dome of St. Peters	Vatican Gardens
Pinocoteca - Vatican Art Museum	Pinocoteca - Vatican Art Museum
Court of the Pigna	Entrance to the Chiaramonti Museum
Comodoro’s Sphere Within a Sphere	The Pigna or Pine Cone
Coat of Arms	We entered the Vatican Museum and began our one-way tour with all the other tourists. You could spend months in the Vatican Museums and still probably not see it all. You certainly really see very little between the huge numbers of tourists (most of whom aren't the least interested in what is there) and the speed with which they rush you through. The photos below are just a little sample of the overwhelming amount of art in the place.
Vatican Museums	Vatican Museums
Vatican Museums	Vatican Museums
Vatican Museums	Vatican Museums
Vatican Museums	Vatican Museums
Vatican Museums - Maps	Vatican Museums - Map of Venice
Vatican Museums	Vatican Museums
We finally got to the wonderful “School of Athens” fresco by Raphael.  It is our favorite.  In real life, it is a huge fresco covering the entire wall.  It also has a rounded top and is not the rectangle we see in reproductions.  In the same room is the “Disputation of the Holy Sacrament or Triumph of Religion” also by Raphael.
Raphael's School of Athens
Raphael's School of Athens - with Michelangelo resting his head on his fist	Raphael's School of Athens - Plato and Aristotle
Raphael's School of Athens - just to the right of the man in the orange robe is a self-portrait of Raphael - looking out of the picture	Raphael's School of Athens - Euclid bending over to help a young scholar with his geometry
Raphael's School of Athens - Pythagoras with the book and white draped robe	Vatican Museums
Finally, we entered the Sistine Chapel.  This was our first visit to the Sistine and tours were allowed to move through the entire room, which is often closed or sectioned off from visitors.  No photography is allowed in the Chapel and we watched security nab and escort out a couple after confiscating their camera.  They tried to hold it waist high and snap pictures of the ceiling.             The frescoes on the left wall are scenes of Moses and the Old Testament by Perugino, Botticelli, and others.  On the right, are frescoes of the life of Christ by Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Rosselli. The front wall is huge and was painted in 1536 by Michelangelo.  It is his rendition of the Last Judgment.              The center panels of the ceiling move from creation to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to Noah and the Great Flood.  Around these panels are men and angels.  It took him four years to complete the ceiling (1508-12) and he painted standing on a wooden scaffold.  He did not lie on his back to paint.             The Chapel is so marvelous it can’t be described.
Panels depicting the Sistine art work: Michelangelo's Last Judgement on the front wall
Panels depicting the Sistine art work: the side walls
Panels depicting the Sistine art work: Michelangelo's Ceiling
We left the Sistine Chapel and went into St. Peter’s Basilica.  We looked at the Jubilee Door that is bricked up from the inside and only opened every 25 years when the pope celebrates a Jubilee Year.  Inside to the right is Michelangelo’s famous “Pieta.”  It is incredibly beautiful.  We looked at the Chapel for John Paul II and then the impressive canopied high altar over the tomb of St. Peter.  Raphael designed the glass mosaic of the “Transfiguration of Christ.”  The Baptistery Chapel is across from the Pieta.             We exited onto St. Peter’s Square where the heat was now suffocating but the tour was very inclusive and our guide and reservations and whispers made it very memorable.
St. Peter’s Square	Jubilee Door of St. Peter's
Doors of St. Peter's	Doors of St. Peter's
Michelangelo's Pieta
Bernini’s St. Peter’s Baldachin or canopy	Bernini’s St. Peter’s Baldachin or canopy
Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica	Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica
Bernini’s Chair of St. Peter and “Gloria”	Raphael - Transfiguration
Baptismal font	Swiss Guard
Statue of St. Peter	St. Peter’s Basilica
Bernini’s Tuscan colonnades in St. Peter’s Square - all four are visible	Bernini’s Tuscan colonnades in St. Peter’s Square - now it looks like single columns

Continue on next page