Vatican City

Last night:

We made pasta for dinner with meat sauce from a jar and some frozen vegetables that all in all turned out to be pretty good. We spent more time after dinner picking out things we would like to do on the weekend and trying to find the other thing we can include in our Roma Pass for free admission (it's harder than it looks if you're not excited by art galleries). We have a whole list of options for interesting things to do, so there won't be any boredom!

We watched a new episode of Big Bang Theory on the Ipad before bed (I know, we're not exactly immersed in the culture here) and laughed so hard we thought we'd pee our pants. It was hilarious. I miss that show and am looking forward to watching it at home.

One of the girls here was sick yesterday, so we dug into our bags and found all the stuff Jeff took when he wasn't feeling well (pepto, herbal stomach stuff, peppermint tea) and low and behold she was feeling better this morning. The other one now has a cold - we just need to survive the next 5 days without getting sick and we'll be golden.

We wandered over to breakfast this morning and it was raining pretty hard, but donned in our rain jackets, we were prepared. We had something to eat in a very crowded room and are now drying off and hanging out until we head off to the metro to get to the Vatican for our tour at 1pm. :)

***

We made our lunches before we left and headed out into a clearing sky, we didn't even need to wear our hoods.

The metro was at the train station, so only a few minutes walk for us, which was nice, where we caught the A Line towards the stop at the Vatican. We walked for a bit until we came across huge walls and a bustling line of people. We thought we'd try and find the main square of the Vatican but decided it would probably be better to hangout and eat our lunch in the Enjoy Rome office instead (we didn't want to get stuck in a crowd and not make our tour!).

Our sandwiches were too bready and so kind of gross, next time, I'm picking the bread but it was food. We met a nice English family who would be going on the same tour as us, so we chatted until we got our headsets and met our guide.

Our guide's name was Jeanette and she has lived in Rome for 10 years (originally from Florida) and has been studying Art History. I think she is working on her thesis for her Masters degree. Anyway, she does approximately three tours a day, sometimes six days a week, so she was very well versed in all the history and entertainment pieces of guiding a group of 23. She made jokes, got to know everyone's names, where they were from and what they did. She was very nice.

We all received headsets (albeit with only one earplug, probably so we could still hear the happenings around us - an excellent idea if you've ever seen drivers in Rome! Yeesh!) and then headed off toward the Vatican Museum.

We had to go through metal detectors as soon as we got through the doors! There is also a dress code, covered shoulders and knees and men have to wear "full-length trousers". Jeanette told us it was going to be like a school trip, with scheduled bathroom breaks and a follow-the-leader style. We were just happy to have someone do the thinking for us for a change.

We received a history lesson outside in the courtyard (I think it was about St. Peter, the first pope - I took notes and I still don't remember) then about the Sistine Chapel, where she showed us pictures of the paintings we would see inside (so we knew what we were looking at) and then took us through St. Peter's Basilica.

Here are a few things I learned, in no particular order and I only remember because I took notes (don't quote me on anything because it's all chicken scratch on my piece of paper and there is just way too much information to get it all correct!):

- There are 2000 rooms in the Vatican Museum. If you were to stand at each piece of artwork for 60 seconds, it would take 12 years to see it all. A lot, I know.
- There is a pine cone with two peacocks on either side of it in the courtyard, Pagan religious symbols, because it was thought that Paganism influenced the development of Christianity (please don't quote me) - the pine cone is a symbol of fertility and the peacocks of immortality.
- There is a globe in the centre of the courtyard that is the newest feature of the Vatican, it represents the idea that the centre of the world is Catholicism.
- The Sistine Chapel was built to protect the cardinals during conclave (electing a new pope after 15 days of mourning when one dies) because what better place to attack the people of the church when they are all together at one time. They are locked in one place for an extended period of time (eat, sleep, washroom, etc.) until a pope is chosen. The longest conclave has taken 58 days. White smoke lit from inside means a new pope has been chosen and black means one has not. Millions of people either gather at the Vatican to wait in anticipation or watch on t.v.(billions).
- Michelangelo (sculptor but more famously known as painter) did autopsies on cadavers, even though it was illegal 500 years ago to better understand the human anatomy for his art.
- The panels of the Sistine Chapel show that once you've started sinning, you can't stop, it's in our nature and that's why Noah's Arc was built, to show the salvation of humanity.
- It took Michelangelo for straight years to paint the ceiling, standing with his arms and neck facing upwards, and without wanting to do it in the first place - essentially, the pope made him do it.
- The paintings are called frescoes ('fresh' in Italian) because the paint had to be applied to wet plaster so the plaster would absorb the colour. This required skillful timing as any dry plaster would have to be scraped off and done again. Michelangelo had an assistant to help with this process.
- He was physically tormented after the ceiling, his body wrecked (nearly blind from the paint and plaster in his eyes, back and arms disheveled) and was also emotionally bruised (he was no longer known as a sculptor).
- He was recommissioned (told to) paint the Last Judgement painting on the back wall of the chapel and that took five years to complete. It's a very intimidating piece of work. Imagine sitting in mass and this huge wall of a painting is staring you down, warning that you better repent and be good or you will be judged and sent to Heaven or Hell accordingly.
- The rest of the paintings along the walls took another 13 years complete.
- From 1982-1995 the chapel was cleaned because after 500 years of candle smoke from mass, it had taken a beating.
- The floor in certain areas of the museum were 2000 years old (talk about durability!). The original floor! All different stones of different colours and not painted.
- Approximately 26 000 people visit the Vatican every day, eight million visited last year.
- Rome is something like 2765 years old and 1000 of those years belonged to the Catholic church.
- We visited the Hall of Maps, huge maps painted to show a birds-eye view of the different districts the pope owned in the area of Italy (I think... urgh, so much to remember). The maps today are actually 85% accurate, which is really amazing considering how old they are!
- The ceiling in the Hall of Maps is covered in gold leaf because the pope paid for the best.
- The birthrate of the Vatican is 0 (cardinals, priests, bishops, the pope... no one reproduces! lol).
- The pope is protected by the Swiss Guard who are males between the ages of 19-26, speak 3 languages or more, and are very highly trained in all sorts of stuff re: protection (guns, etc.).
- The average height of a Roman man 500 years ago was 4'7 and a woman, 4'.
- Inside St. Peter's Basilica (St. Peter being the first ever pope - I'm still not sure how this was decided) there is the High Alter where only the pope can give mass.
- "Basilica" means meeting place, and/or a type of church that holds a relic (St. Peter's remains are under the church). This basilica can hold 60,000 people.

Anyway, those are some of the notes I took as we squeezed and elbowed our way through a TON of people! It was a little bit ridiculous, but understandable for what we were seeing.

I thought the Sistine Chapel was so neat! I can't imagine how much work that must have taken and the terrible toll on Michelangelo's body. He didn't even want to do it! Poor guy.

What irritated me though was that you are not allowed to take pictures inside the chapel and yet SO many people were doing it. We locked our cameras away in our bags and were told it was not allowed, but it was so tempting when as soon as you walked in people were video recording or flashing their cameras... urgh. So disrespectful if you ask me - it's a masterpiece, to be preserved and revered!

Anyway. We missed a ton of rooms we could have seen with art in them because, frankly, we didn't know where to go and there were so many people everywhere. We took some pictures of the Swiss Guard, got a post card from the souvenir shop and then found the metro to head home.

We stopped to pick up some shish-kebabs that we'll make in the frying pan for dinner.

I think it's nearly time for a drink and some non-thinking time. My mind has been blown today and tomorrow is the Colosseum, so a lot more to come!

Amanda

P.S. Since I couldn't take any of my own pictures, here are a couple of links from google...

The Sistine Chapel
http://ladylikei.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/michelangelo-sistine_chapel.jpg
(I think this is prior to it's face lift)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/46/Sistine_chapel.jpg
(After face lift - at least that's what it looked like to me today!)

The ceiling (Creation story)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sistine_chapel.jpg
(It's all facing one way, the way you walk in and sit for mass)

The Final Judgement
http://adishakti.org/images/last_judgment_XL.jpg
(Pretty intimidating don't you think!)