The Vatican Museums

May 16, 2010

The Vatican Museums

Now, if you've been keeping up, you know that I recently enumerated some of the most basic and necessary to-do's in Rome. Why wasn't the Vatican on that list? Is it that it's not worthy? No. But it's not in Rome, either.

I've been in a class this semester on the Renaissance, and it was pretty interesting to talk about Rome and the Vatican in class when I'd just seen it. The pope went from all of Italy to just this one little section in just a few hundred years. His power rivaled that of the Kings back in the Renaissance, but now he's more of a figurehead than supreme ruler.

I had the fortune of being in Rome for Easter. Everyone thought I was crazy for planning a trip to Rome during Easter. I thought I was crazy. The truth is that I was just dumb enough to not even realize that I was going to be in Rome for Easter when I booked the tickets! Once I took a closer look at the calendar, though, I had an idea of what I'd gotten myself into. I think that the preemptive fear only made our trip better, however. Knowing that the city would be over crowded, we looked into ways to make the trip easier. The Roma Pass was the answer: 2 free tourist attractions, tons of discounts on others, and a 3 day all access pass to all public transportation. Plus, it granted us the right to cut the lines at the Colosseum, which was an enormous time-saver. We also bought our tickets for the Vatican ahead of time. If we hadn't, we probably wouldn't have gotten in. Even with the tickets, which allowed us to cut in front of all non-ticket-holders, we ended up in a line of Disney World proportions. The line for the poor souls who didn't book ahead zig-zagged in front of the entrance before extending all the way back and around the wall that encloses the Vatican. There were easily thousands of people there, and the line must have taken the entire day to get through. Our wait was only about an hour, which could be considered a miracle.

The wait was for the Vatican Museums. We opted for a "short visit" of about 2 1/2 hours. Part one of the visit was around the gardens (which we seemed to not be able to visit directly) and into a building full of ancient sculptures.

I'm normally not a huge sculpture fan. I appreciate the hard work that goes into them, but I can't really relate to them like I relate to paintings, having experienced the medium myself, so I normally glide by and admire in motion, but here I found myself stopping to really take a look. I think the difference was that although I don't feel like I have a connection to sculpture, here I had an interest in the underlying myth. Having recently taken a very interesting class featuring Greek mythology, I started playing a guessing game with myself to see how many sculptures I could identify without reading the plaques.

(Here stands Ganymede, chosen lover of Zeus, with the King of the God's signature eagle at the young boy's side.)

The path we took was through the Raphael rooms and the finally into the Sistine Chapel. It sounds short, but this is a never-ending path that leads directly from room to room with no exit and no end in sight. You shuffle along from room to room with the other thousand people all gaping at the golden ceilings, the ceiling to floor maps and tapestries, and the giant, presiding statues. Every room is exquisite, yet the magnetic pull towards the Sistine Chapel waiting like the Holy Grail at the end of our journey keeps people from truly taking a look at the ornate antiquity that surrounds them. It's a shame, but at the same time, it would be too exhausting and time consuming to stop every minute. It's like the Louvre: you can't do it all. If you have an excess of time and a love for art, it's probably worth more than one visit. Otherwise, just try not to blink too much and soak up as much of the beauty as possible before gliding on to the next bit.