Day 5 - Vatican

Monday began with an early start as we had to meet a tour group at 8:45 outside the Vatican. Jordan and Tyra had gone with the same company on a tour of the Coliseum/Palatine Hill. They absolutely loved it and upon hearing their rave reviews we decided to go with them to catch the same tour. The huge benefit of going with a tour is that you get to skip the line (which on any given day people can wait in for several hours) and the guides can take you to the most famous areas. The Vatican is absolutely enormous, it is actually its own city, and if we had gone alone there is no way we would have even known where to begin. The museum has 84 rooms for statues alone. And when I say rooms I really mean vast hallways. With our guide we were able to see the most famous pieces without the hassle of locating them ourselves. Along the way our guide also shared some really interesting information we would have never heard if we walked through alone.

When we first entered the Vatican museum we went through all of the art work/paintings. I guess all of it is art so that wasn’t a very good description. In this section we got to see one of Raphael’s very first pieces of work and then his later piece of work. This was significant because of the drastic change in his style of painting. The reason for this change was Michelangelo. The problem was that Raphael never studied human bodies like Michelangelo did so his people never were proportionally correct, though much more realistic than his original work. The other bit of significance is that Raphael painted Michelangelo in this painting of his and it is the only portrait of him that survives today. Through this painting we get a glimpse of one of the most famous artists of all time. I thought that was pretty fascinating.

After viewing this incredible piece of work we moved outside into the Pinecone courtyard (I don’t think that is really its formal name, it just has a huge pinecone that I can no longer remember anything about). In this courtyard there wasn’t much of significance, just entertainment. In the center of the courtyard is a gigantic metal ball. Our tour guide joked that this ball was actually used in the Star Wars film. Our guide had no clue how it got placed at the Vatican as he doubts people will ever stand in awe of it compared to the many other items of significance. Nonetheless it was humorous. He did say its one shining glory is that is spins!

The very first thing we got to see was a replica of Michelangelo’s famous statue of Mary and Jesus. The real one is in the Basilica which we saw later, but our guide showed us this one so we could hear the history of it. It is probably the most remarkable statue there is with an incredible story behind it that proves Michelangelo’s genius. Michelangelo never believed in signing his work because he thought people should be able to tell his work apart from others. The statue of Mary and Jesus was placed in a church and since no one knew it was Michelangelo’s piece he wanted to hear what the people thought about it. He went and stood in the crowd of people surrounding the statue and listened. As he listened all he heard were criticisms and he became deeply upset. The things the people were criticizing were the things that made his art such a masterpiece. He became very upset and asked someone in the crowed if they knew who had designed this piece. The person didn’t so Michelangelo began hitting him. Another guy in the crowed said he had made it to stop the fight but this only caused Michelangelo to attack him. Eventually he went mad and to the crowd he appeared to be destroying the statue. What he was really doing was carving his name into the statue. This is one of the first and last statues of his he has ever signed as he became pretty well known after the brawl.

Now some of the criticisms of the statue are that Mary is too big, her one arm couldn’t support a grown Jesus, and Mary looks to young. All of these “mistakes” were intentional though. Mary is too big because she is really holding the baby Jesus and having a vision of his future. Her shoulders, which appear to big as well, are being shrugged because she knows there is absolutely nothing she can do about his future. Jesus is big in the statue as Mary’s vision but in her arms rests a baby which she easily could have supported with one arm .This also explains why she looks so young. The statue is pure genius and by far my favorite of all time. Not only is the meaning incredible alone, but Michelangelo wasn’t even a very religious man. To be able to capture such a significant moment means he really did have to be a genius. Of the entire day this statue was probably my favorite part because of the incredible meaning behind it.

After the pinecone courtyard we headed to see the statues. As I said before there are 84 rooms for statues alone so we hit the key ones. In this portion our tour guide selected three statues to key in on that all tied together once we hit the Sistine Chapel. They were each done by Michelangelo. One statue that we came upon that I was excited about was Lacoon. We had studied it last year so I thought it was really neat to get to see the real deal. I have actually studied a lot of the things we have gotten to see throughout my entire time abroad which I find pretty cool. Our guide gave us a lot of information about statues but not much of it really stuck with me.

Moving away from the statues we entered a room of maps. Now that may sound kind of lame but these maps were huge. They not only practically covered floor to ceiling, but were perfectly detailed maps for the time they were created. The maps were of the entire country of Italy. This is one of those things that to really appreciate you would have to see. To give a little more perspective I could not even take a picture of one of the maps without cutting a great deal of it out of the picture. The other incredible part of this room was that the ceiling was made out of portraits and scenic paintings, all of which were framed. I cannot even begin to imagine how long it took for someone to paint that ceiling. There were thousands of different paintings…an absolutely incredible sight.

I feel like I am using the words incredible, amazing, etc a lot but honestly these words don’t even come close to describing the beauty the Vatican holds. Now as we came to the end of this room we were about to enter the Sistine Chapel. I was pretty stoked. Our guide told us that no matter what we were not allowed to look up until we were at the back of the room and could admire the entire ceiling at once. This was sort of a challenge. The Vatican is an extremely crowded place so as we were walking at a snail’s pace I cheated and looked up. I don’t think it ruined the experience for me one bit I am happy to say. I thought the Sistine Chapel was pretty incredible but not the most amazing thing I have seen in my life. As I say this thought my opinion differs as I consider many different factors. First of all Michelangelo was one man who had never painted before. He was told by the pope he was going to paint the Sistine Chapel. So not only did he have no choice but to paint, he had never painted before and did the entire thing solo. Now that is remarkable. On top of this it is a ceiling so he had to lie on his back to paint it while paint dripped on him and he breathed in toxic fumes. They didn’t exactly have the same quality of paint we have today. So all in all it was an astonishing feat Michelangelo completed.

The paintings were also special in the fact that again Michelangelo was not a religious man but could capture the right emotions through his work. My favorite part was the most famous scene where God and Adam are reaching towards each other but doesn’t quite touch. While Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel the pope and him got into a few quarrels so throughout his masterpiece Michelangelo incorporated various subliminal messages that the pope would recognize but not be able to do anything about Guess it shows you something about Michelangelo’s character…he was not someone you messed with! I could list all those little things but then I could be writing for a century plus it’s much easier to explain while you are looking at the Sistine Chapel than through words. I think Michelangelo completed the ceiling when he was in his 60’s and vowed never to paint again. He never did until the pope asked him to complete the Sistine Chapel twenty some years later. Michelangelo completed the Sistine chapel when he was year some years old! He was able to get it done before he died. The rest of the room was completed by Raphael and then some of Raphael’s (and I think Michelangelo’s) students. (Raphael studied under Michelangelo so either way it was from students of the same skill.)

We got to spend a lot of time admiring the Sistine Chapel which you really must have in order to fully take it in. The one thing that was disappointing was that the room was super crowded and loud. It sort of killed any atmosphere to fully take in the significance of the room. There were officers who randomly hushed the place but that lasted for all of ten seconds. On the bright side, while we were in the Sistine Chapel we actually ran into Rebecca!! (Another girl with the BSU group) Sort of amazing how we ran into her there of all places we could have. She was in Rome the same time as us but we had no means of contacting her so it was a fun little moment. I absolutely love running into people in place you would never imagines because it just goes to show how small the world really is!

She was with a tour as well so we decided to try to find each other outside when our tours were over. After we exited the Sistine Chapel our tour ended and we were pointed in the right direction for the Basicilla. The Basicilla is one fantastic place. It is absolutely gigantic. You really feel like an ant when you are inside. We got to see the original statue of Mary and Jesus inside which was by far one of the neatest things inside. The entire place is filled with incredible sculptures. The Basicilla left me a little disappointed though. Not because it wasn’t one of the most beautiful places I have seen but because of the way people behaved inside. To most people it was just another tourist spot where they were pushy and had no respect for their surrounds. To me the place should have been treated a whole lot differently. If you didn’t know where you were people probably would have never guess they were in the largest church on earth based on the way people acted. Being around those people made me want to leave as soon as possible. Back to a move positive note…we did located Rebecca inside and picked a time to actually meet up. We also go to see something kind of special though we still really don’t know what it was. Some of the pope’s guards ushered in someone who appeared to be of importance though. So although we don’t know what we saw we got to see the pope’s guards which was pretty cool.

After we had seen all we wanted to see we met Rebecca outside. We then decided that before we left the Vatican for good we wanted to see the tombs of the popes. We walked through that and then got to see the shrine they have to St. Peter. I thought this part was really neat. It was an entire room that you couldn’t even see entirely. We aren’t exactly sure if his body is buried there or not because there was no grave but it was still really a neat sight. Once we finished the tomb section we decided we had seen all we wanted to see of the Vatican and headed out to get some lunch. We met up with Rebecca’s mom who waited for us while we weren’t through the toms and just began walking to find somewhere to eat. To go to a good non-touristy place Rebecca’s tour guide said to find a side street. We were on the lookout for one but it took us forever to find one. Eventually we just decided we had to pick a place before we passed out from hunger.

We went to a pizzeria place and I think it was an excellent pick. I tried the eggplant pizza with parmesan and loved it. I was a little wary of trying it since I have only had eggplant once before but I figured I should be a little adventurous. We all had a really nice time at lunch together. Running into Rebecca and her mom put a really fun turn on the day after being a bit overwhelmed by all the tourists at the Vatican. We also had a really goofy waiter which only made lunch better. He kept singing and dancing so it made for quite an entertaining meal. After lunch they were heading back to their hotel to pack up as they were leaving for Ireland in the morning!

Jeana and I decided to head to Trevi fountain area one more time to do our souvenir shopping. It was definitely my favorite area the entire time we were in Rome. We shopped until we dropped basically and then headed back to the hostel for some relaxation time. Once we got back to the hostel we had just planned to recover some energy and head back out but we never seemed to actually gain any energy. We ended up staying in the rest of the night. The other girls came back early as well as they were exhausted form a day that didn’t go to smoothly for them. As we were all feeling the drain of being so busy we decided to make some tea, pop in a movie (Madagascar II…can never go wrong with that one) and call it a night. I think we were all feeling the need to get some rest as we all headed to bed early and fell fast asleep.