Today is Vatican day. Vatican has been a sovereign state since February 1929 and is ruled by the pope. It is surrounded by a medieval city walls and has its own telephone system, post office, gardens, astronomical observatory, radio station, banking system, and pharmacy, as well as a contingent of Swiss Guards responsible for the personal safety of the pope since 1506. The Vatican also issues its own coins and controls its own Internet domain. The Vatican Museums include a fantastic art collection.
We decided to start the day with the visit to the museums since they were still on winter schedule and close early. We arrived at opening time but the line was already extremely long stretched around the massive walls as far as we could see. As we pondered our options we were offered English-speaking tour of the museums with no wait (for a fee naturally). We walked in through the separate entrance past the huge line and the tour also turned out to be good. The museum was very crowded but tours utilize "Whispers" headphone system so we could listen to the guide without having to stand next to her.
The Vatican Museums trace their origin to the marble sculpture of Laocoon. It depicts Trojan priest and his sons struggling with two serpents. It was discovered in Roman vineyard in January 1506. Pope Julius II purchased in on recommendation of Michelangelo and put it on public display one month after the discovery.
Rotunda room is modeled on the Pantheon and displays a big circular mosaic of the 3rd century which represents fights between Greeks and centaurs, tritons and nereids. A huge monolithic porphyry basin came from the Nero’s Golden House.
Gallery of the Tapestry contains Flemish tapestries designed by Raphael’s pupils.
Gallery of Maps is an important record of 16th century history and cartography.
The tour ended at Sistine chapel. Talking is not allowed there so our guide gave us a "virtual" tour at the beginning of our visit. Photos are not allowed either.
We exited Sistine Chapel through the door leading to St. Peter’s cathedral and the square. It was a nice day and we decided to the top of the dome. There are 537 steps to the top of the dome of St. Peter’s. We took an elevator to the terrace roof of the basilica instead of climbing the first 190 steps. From there we had a magnificent view of the dome itself.
The climb to the top of St Peters is interesting to say the least! The steps get smaller, the corridors get narrower and the walls slanted at the angle of the dome. Around half way up there is a balcony inside the dome, allowing us to look up close at the dome and down into St. Peters Basilica itself.
The view from the top is breathtaking. We could see a lot of Rome’s most famous sites, including St Peter’s square below and the Vatican Gardens.
After the dizzying descent we visited the cathedral. The cathedral is so massive it’s hard to do it justice with pictures. The tiny gray line below the windows of the dome is the walkway with 10 foot tall fence from where we took the pictures earlier (see above).
It also contains many masterpieces, including Baldacchino
and Michelangelo’s Pieta.
After lunch we walked across the river to Castle St Angelo. It was originally built as emperor Hadrian’s grandiose Mausoleum in 2nd century, then became a fortress in the Middle Ages and a Papal pleasure dome in the Renaissance.
We ended our walk at Piazza del Poppolo.
This was our last day in Italy. In the morning, we took the Leonardo Express to the airport; our parting shot is the view of a Roman Aquaduct from the train window.
