Rome Day Four: The Vatican

Today was our last day in Rome, and we needed to be out of the apartment first thing. We all got up dressed, packed, ate the last of our cereal, bread and leftover pizza and said goodbye to our temporary home.

I was surprised when James asked me, "Now, who exactly is this Pope guy whose place we're gonna see?" I replied, "You know, the Pope, the Pope, the head of the Roman Catholic Church." James then asked, "What do you mean 'head'?" and then "But, I don't get it. Of what church and where?" This went on with me explaining about the election of the Pope, overseeing the Church system throughout the world, etc. He still wasn't quite getting it, the whole international thing had him thrown, I think. It was only when I said, "James, he's the top dog at the Church, for the whole world. There is no dog who is topper," did he say, "OK, I get it." Hmmm...do I need to go to confession for comparing the Pope to a dog?

Our tour at the Vatican Museums was for 9:30 and this morning we took a city bus. As the bus wove its way through the rush hour traffic, we observed for the last time, the perilous ways of the Roman driver. So often, two streets would merge into one, with no traffic light, and it was another game of chicken between all the vehicles. The scooter drivers would be intimated by nothing -- not car nor truck nor bus. There were either the bravest or most reckless people in the world.


I wanted so badly to capture the versatility of the SmartCar, but these two pictures I took this morning fall short of it. As you can see, SmartCars are so short (3 feet shorter than the Mini Cooper), they can park either parallel or perpendicular to the street. Several times I saw a perpendicularly parked SmartCar, it's back flush up against a wall, parked in between two parallel-parked cars, with what looked like just a few inches between all of them. How did the driver exit his car? Through the sunroof? Ah, well, these photos will have to do.

At the Vatican Museums

Today's guided tour would take us through several different buildings of the Vatican Museums, which are considered some of the greatest in the world. Over 4,000,000 people visit the museums every year and we seemed to fall only slightly short of that figure today.

Sign right at the entrance door. I turned to the kids and said, "Good thing we didn't wear our swimsuits today!"

The statue Laocoön and His Sons is the origin of the Vatican Museums. This 1st century BC sculpture, upon the recommendation of Michelangelo, was purchased by Pope Julius II and put on public display at the Vatican exactly one month after its discovery in a Roman vineyard. Laocoön was a Trojan priest who warned the Trojans not to accept the Greek wooden horse. In punishment, the gods had him and his sons strangled by sea serpents.

Apollo Belvedere (around 350BC) was prized for its idealized, perfectly proportioned portrayal of the human body. From the mid-18th century, it was considered the greatest of all ancient sculptures and it was Napoleon's greatest boast to have looted it from the Vatican.

The Belvedere Torso, dating from the 1st century BC is a masterpiece of realism, as opposed to idealism. The contorted pose of the torso and musculature were highly influential on Michelangelo and Raphael.

Our tour guide told us a very interesting fact: in ancient Rome, these sculptures would have been painted "like Playmobil toys," with eyes like those of a china doll. In 2004, the Vatican put on an exhibit, recreating these statues, some side-by-side with the plain marble statue.

Nero's bath. Our tour guide at the Palatine explained that this red marble (Imperial Porphyry), used all over Rome thousands of years ago, came from a single quarry in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. There are no other Imperial Porphyry mines in the world.

A section of Raphael's The School of Athens. Plato, the white-bearded man with the raised hand standing under the arch, was painted in the likeness of Leonardo da Vinci. The sulking man near the bottom resting his head against his hand was Michelangelo.

Raphael's self-portrait in The School of Athens is the young man in the black hat gazing out at us.

There were also more contemporary works of art. We were all struck by this 1971 sculpture that seems to be floating in thin air.

At the end of our tour, we entered the Sistine Chapel, the site of the Papal conclave, the ceremony by which a new Pope is selected. Absolutely no photography allowed. And everything 15 minutes or so there was a recording asking people to be quiet. The Chapel was shoulder-to-shoulder people and just seconds after we all hushed, the buzz of conversation would begin anew.

The Sistine Chapel's fame rests on its architecture, evocative of Solomon's Temple of the Old Testament and on its decoration which has been frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, and Botticelli. Under the patronage of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo painted 12,000 square feet of the chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512. He resented the commission, and believed his work only served the Pope's need for grandeur. However, today...

...the ceiling with its scenes from Genesis and painting of prophets, and...

... especially The Last Judgment, are widely believed to be Michelangelo's crowning achievements in painting.

The kids knew just what they wanted to look for upon entering the Sistine Chapel. Our Italian guide had told us Michelangelo painted every figure in The Last Judgment, as she pronounced it -- "nekkid," including Mary and Jesus. This was scandalous. The Pope's own Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, said "it was mostly disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully, and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns." What was the offended Michelangelo to do? Why put da Cesena in the painting, of course!

And so here is da Cesena in the lower right hand corner of The Last Judgment as Minos, one of the three judges of the underworld, complete with ass' ears and being bitten by a snake in a very sensitive area. Micaela and James located him immediately. When Baigio complained to the Pope of his portrayal, the pontiff explained that he had no jurisdiction over hell and that the portrait would have to remain. After Michelangelo's death, an artist was commissioned to add vestments and loincloths to all the figures.

From the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the Delphic Sibyl, legendary Greek prophetess. Her last prophecy was said to be the birth of Jesus Christ.

One of the most famous images in the world, The Creation of Adam

The downfall of Adam and Eve

From the Last Judgment St Bartholomew holding the knife of his martyrdom (being skinned alive and then crucified upside down) and his flayed skin. Michelangelo, reflective of the feelings of contempt he had for being commissioned to paint The Last Judgment, depicted his own face in the skin.

Micaela, James and Emilie were real troopers through this tour. The tour guide even complimented them on their attentiveness and good behavior. But, it was so crowded that they could often not see what our tour guide was referring to. And, truthfully, the kids had seen so many sculptures and paintings and had listened to so many tour guides by this time, this was just one more old building housing a lot of old stuff. David said that having everyone in our group using a radio and headphones to hear our guide was probably our saving grace. Micaela, James and Emilie were all excited to hook the receivers on their belts and listen to our guide through their headphones. The Vatican, in an effort to keep the crowds quiet and respectful, has all the guides using this system so they wouldn't need to shout. There were also plenty of people doing self-guided tours with special headphones. They didn't seem to fulfill their purpose, though. We were met by noisy crowds everywhere we went.

Micaela and James pleaded to visit the Egyptian exhibition in another section of the museum, but we needed to watch our time and had to say no. It was on to the Basilica of Saint Peter.

Michelangelo is considered St. Peter's principal designer. Completed in 1626, it took 100 years to construct.

The basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world, holding 60,000 people. Its size made it very difficult for an amateur to photograph.

Catholic tradition holds that Saint Peter's tomb is below the altar.

Michelangelo's masterpiece The Pietà. There are many theories regarding why Michelangelo made Mary so young-looking. One is that youth symbolizes her incorruptible purity. Another theory is that the viewer is actually looking at an image of Mary holding the baby Jesus. Mary's youthful appearance and apparently serene facial expression, coupled with the position of the arms could suggest that she is seeing her child, while the viewer is seeing an image of the future.

The Pietà is situated on a high pedestal, protected by a bullet-proof acrylic glass panel that keeps viewers at an unfortunate distance. This is due to a 1972 attack on the sculpture when a mentally disturbed man attacked the Virgin with a hammer, causing damage to her arm, nose and eyes. It's a shame. We could not get close enough to really see the detail of the sculpture, not even a good look at Mary's face, and it was set so high, you could not even see Jesus' face.

Out front, James posed Emilie holding up the obelisk.

And that was it. Too short a visit into the basilica, but it was time to collect our luggage and head off the train station for the first leg of our trip home.

As we sat, eating one last snack and bowl of gelato at the airport, David and I talked over what went well and what didn't. Flying standby actually worked fine this trip, both there and back (we had already been assigned seats); our apartment was perfect; the pizza wasn't as good as we expected, but the gelati was even better; after our first two days of gloomy rain, we had brilliant blue skies; I thought we could have done without the very expensive and nausea-inducing 4-D movie on the first day, but David reminded me that the kids enjoyed it; we should have done the Vatican Museums with a less-expensive self-guided tour; I wished we had ventured down among the ruins of the Forum, but David said, to the kids at least, it would have just been another bunch of ruins; it was the right decision to bring the stroller for Rebecca, even if half the sidewalk was blocked by cars and scooters and we had to backtrack around them to cross a street; when I said that the guided tour I took of St. Peter's years ago was so great, I wish we could have done it with the kids, David just shook his head in amusement and asked, "Are you kidding?"

The only thing nagging at me was that we didn't see the Capitoline Wolf, the iconic sculpture of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus that the kids had taken quite a liking to. It would have meant paying another expensive entrance fee and traipsing through another museum. My regret was lessened somewhat when I read that the sculpture, long believed to date from the 5th century BC, is now under scrutiny. Radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating has found that it was probably manufactured in the 13th century AD.

All in all, we congratulated ourselves on a great trip, even if we were just winging it.