0376 A few days around Rome

4^th – 8^th Oct 2015

A visit to the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel

It was great to see Janet’s long time friend Gabriella and her husband Willy again – It has been a number of years since we last saw them, although Janet has always kept in close contact on Skype etc, and has ever since she met them originally when she was an Au Pair in the region in the early 1970’s. They live in Rocca Priora up in the hills above Rome in their large and rambling house, and it was an ideal spot for us to stop for a while. It was fun to see them again, catch up on each other’s news, and spend some time with a very Italian family. 

For the first couple of days Janet caught up with Gabriella while I relaxed and caught up with banking and other internet stuff.  Having been to Rome previously, all I really felt interested in seeing this time was the Vatican as I had never been there, but when we got on the internet re tickets etc we found everything had to be booked 2 days in advance, even in October (what would it be like in August ?)  So we booked for Tuesday, and without understanding quite what was what, we booked the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel Tour.  Of course, now we have been there and done it, we might have done it slightly differently, but hindsight is always a fine thing……

Our tour started at 11.30 am, so on Tuesday morning we left the house with Willy (who was driving in to do some work) and he dropped us at a Metro station, from where we caught the train all the way to Ottaviano station which leaves only a short walk to the Vatican and the Museum.  After all these buses and trams and trains we have been catching in various countries recently, we must be getting better at this public transport stuff because it all seemed too easy this time ! 

Having some time in hand, we first walked through to St Peter’s Square and found queues of people lined up to try to get inside.  I have to say that I am surprised by just how many tourists are still exploring Europe in mid October – I honestly thought it would have thinned out a bit by now.  But I am also realizing that during my years away from Europe, and especially time recently in S America where, apart from the Galapagos and Machu Piccu there were never big hoards of tourists in one place, Europe is just one big crowded place !  Anyway, after a walk around St Peter’s Square, admiring the impressive, and seemingly endless columns and statues, we headed off down the road to meet our tour at the entrance to the Vatican Museum at about 11.15 am.  Once again passing queues of people lining up to get in, we found our way to the meeting point, and by 11.30 am we headed into the Museum.  I have to admit, I didn’t exactly know what I was going to see !

First of all, the word “Tour” is a misnomer – You can go on tours, group or personal, but they are costly and often you are restricted to the speed and length of the tour.  Many of these “tours” in Rome are actually just a way of getting you past the incredibly long queues of people who haven’t booked 2 days ahead and are lining up, and then, once you are through the turnstiles, the guide leaves you and you are on your own.  And that is what happened to us.  Once inside, we were given our tickets, pointed towards where we were to pick up our audio guides, and left to our own devices. 

The Vatican Museums display works from the immense collection built up by the Popes throughout the centuries including some of the most renowned classical sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world.  Pope Julius II founded the museums in the early 16th century. The Sistine Chapel with its ceiling decorated by Michelangelo and the Stanze della Segnatura decorated by Raphael are on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums. In 2013, they were visited by 5.5 million people, which combined makes it the 5th most visited art museum in the world.  There are 54 galleries, or salas, in total, with the Sistine Chapel, notably, being the very last sala within the Museum.
 

Not being an artistic person, I won’t even try to pretend that I understood or even fully appreciated what I saw.  I took some photos because it really has the most incredible visual impact – There is just SO much – Endless corridors that are amazing just for their sheer length from end to end, let alone all the artworks on the walls or on the ceilings; Endless paintings, tapestries and sculptures, that, for me anyway, eventually almost roll one into the other; Endless famous names – Michaelangelo, Rafael, da Vinci, Titian, and many many more mostly unheard of by a philistine such as I.   To be honest, by the time I reached the Sistine Chapel after some 2 hours of shuffling shoulder to shoulder with 1000's of others through the corridors and over 50 galleries, I was saturated, and all I could see in the Sistine Chapel were all the many people staring upwards, while the guards repeatedly shouted out in loud voices  “Silencio” (which seemed somewhat

contradictory to me !) and “No camera” in loud voices .  No photos are allowed to be taken inside the Sistine Chapel, and yet everywhere I looked people were pointing cameras (usually ‘phones) and clicking, until they were spotted and shouted at. (Why not just tell people their cameras will be confiscated if they are seen taking photos ?  I mean, why have a rule if you don’t enforce it ?)
Do I sound just a little cynical ?  Probably.  Did I enjoy going to the museum and seeing all the great works of art ?  Yes, very much, and I am glad I went.  But the hoards of shoulder to shoulder people, the tourists (usually of a certain country) who stick their selfie sticks in front of your face all the time so they can get a better photo, and the sheer volume of artworks, I found all too overpowering.  I also think one should go to the Sistine Chapel FIRST, before your mind is totally numbed by the contents of the 50 previous galleries, and then one might appreciate it more.  For me, I would still like to go into St Peter’s Basilica, so will still have something I wish to do next time I return to Rome. And I will probably try to find out if there is ever a slightly less busy time to visit !

After the museum, we enjoyed a quick (and not that good) lunch at a restaurant just down the road, and then headed back to St Peter’s Square.   The colossal Tuscan colonnades, four columns deep, frame the trapezoidal entrance to the basilica and the massive elliptical area which precedes it. The colonnades define the piazza, and are quite a sight in themselves. Then there is the 25 m tall obelisk in the centre – Originally erected in Heliopolis Egypt somewhere between 2494 and 2345 BC, (yes, that’s BC !) it has been moved 3 times, eventually to

Rome in 37 AD, where it presided over Nero’s brutal Roman games and Christian executions. It was only moved to its current location in 1586 – So quite recently, really !!  Absolutely amazing.  The two granite fountains, one dated 1613 and the other by Bernini in1675 almost get ignored as “too modern” after the obelisk !!
I see all these things and am just amazed…….If only stones could talk !!
 
From there we headed home – But not before enjoying a gelati as we walked back to the Metro station !  This time we just caught the metro to Termini where we transferred to a surface train that took us back to Frascati.  There, Gabriella picked us up and we went for a wander in the little town before stopping for an aperitivo in a little place in the centre.  By the time we got back to the house we were pretty pooped from all the walking and all the amazing things we had seen today.

So much so, that when we awoke in the morning, I was still pooped.  In fact, I was not feeling very well at all – definitely something I had eaten or drunk, and I spent the whole of Thursday in bed, eating nothing, but just sleeping and feeling sorry for myself.  I rarely get sick, and to get Montezuma’s Revenge now in Europe after all the places I had been and weird things I have eaten in the past 18 months is just unbelievable ! Janet spent the day with Gabriella so she was OK – Just me having a bad day !!
And the following day we had decided to get back on the road and start heading north so we can visit some friends on the way before getting back to the UK in a couple of weeks time.   

Rest of the pics are here :-  https://picasaweb.google.com/110185357936043625130/0376Rome?authkey=Gv1sRgCN2UgPCb79jsdQ